Ruinous
by gabriel blessing
Summary: Temptation of the flesh and the spirit. That which lies beneath, that which lies beyond. The ruinous powers of Chaos call, and those who hear respond. If, that is, they can manage to find a date to Junior Prom....
1. Slaanesh

Well, let's get the humdrum out of the way. Disclaimer, not my characters, just my plot. Look at Disney, and whoever owns Games workshop for things that aren't mine. Let's see, what else....

Yeah, this isn't Door or Air, which I'm working on, but it's something else that I've been fiddling with. Door's Chapter 2 is about halfway through, so expect it soon. Now, onto a little exposition.

This isn't a proper crossover, and it's not quite a fusion either for that matter. It just borrows elements from the Warhammer universes. Specifically, well, if you know anything about Warhammer, you'll recognize the specifics. For the rest of it, feel free to enjoy! This one should be multiple chapters.

Ruinous.

Slaanesh

It was Friday afternoon, classes had just ended, I was shutting my locker, wondering how I was going to find a date to Junior Prom, watching as Kim and Eric were walking away from me hand in hand, when I had my closest experience with death in my short life.

The cause of this? Knowing my life as you no doubt think you do, you might assume bombs. Maybe death rays. Perchance, a freakish villain bent on world domination. Maybe monkeys. I know I always had my money on monkeys being the ones to do me in.

Instead it was blue haired punkette. A blue haired punkette dressed in what had to be the tightest skimpiest most midriff baring black tube top in existence, combined with a skirt so short that it was probably just a converted belt, mid calf latex high heeled boots, and nothing else.

And considering just how short the skirt was, it was exceedingly easy for anyone who looks to ascertain that when I said nothing else, I meant nothing else.

And what is this incredibly attractive looking model of a decadent and hard hitting sub-culture doing that would precipitate my near death encounter, you ask? Let me tell you.

She had yelled, at the top of her lungs in the most excited, breathless voice laced with passion and desire that had ever graced these hallowed grounds of learning, "Ronnie!" then proceeded to dash down the hall at speeds that could only be considered safe in comparison to experimental vehicles trying to break the ground speed record, tackled me to the floor in a flurry of limbs, and then kissed me with such fervor that I think a rock would blush.

Of course, this wouldn't be enough to cause my life to flash before my eyes on its own: when done so in front of the gaping eyes of the entire school, most importantly my extremely protective, albeit currently inattentive best friend, who is even now frozen and gaping like a fish out of water, then the danger becomes more apparent. Then her eyes narrowed and her lips thinned themselves out in what could either be disapproval for the punkettes brazen attack on her best friend since pre-K, or righteous feminine anger at the attire of aforementioned punkette.

After a good thirty seconds of mental reboot period, I finally did something more useful with my arms then attempting to spell out the alphabet. I put my hands on the girl's shoulders and started my best effort to pry her off of me. Not that I minded what she was doing, per say. At some point during the lip lock she had wrapped her limbs around me like an octopus. Her legs entwined around my hips, bringing hers down on mine in a position that definitely looked and felt sexual in nature. Her hands had meanwhile moved onto full on groping, roaming my body, caressing my hair, teasing at my clothes. She was actually fretting against me, and the friction was causing her to moan into my lips with increasing fervor. I was definitely starting to enjoy this, and that enjoyment was beginning to present itself to the body clutching mine, and that enjoyment was definitely something that she was enjoying herself. However fun this is though, Kim had mostly gotten over her shock of seeing me being assaulted and molested right in front of her. Her face had become almost as red as her hair, and she had begun a slow march to where we were laying with murder in her eyes.

I'm not sure why really. I mean, yeah this is rather unexpected, but I don't exactly go out of the way to get between her and her happy time. I've always tried to be a courteous friend about minding my own business when it came to her dates and boyfriends. Would it kill her to extend me the same right? I mean, yeah, I have no idea who this chick is, or why she's doing this, but hey, I'm definitely appreciating this strange girls efforts.

Finally, I manage to drag the girl far enough away from my face to do that thing I really like doing again. What was that thing called? Oh yeah, breathing. I gasp for air once our lips are finally separated. Wow, was this girl thorough. I think she might have sucked out a filling or two. When I finally gain enough composure to take note of the world around me, the first thing I notice is that we have become something of a spectacle. Quite a crowd had taken note of what was probably the most spectacular PDA in the history of Middleton High. Reactions weren't as varied as you'd think. Guys had expressions of envy and desire, while quite a few had taken note of precisely what my aggressor was wearing and had forgone all effort to hold back the drool pooling down their faces. Girls seemed to be mostly settling on righteous feminine indignation at the outfit the blue haired girl was wearing, maybe mixed with a little envy that she managed to wear it so well and without the faintest hint of self-consciousness.

Speaking of the girl, I made the mistake of looking at her face and meeting her eyes. And what a face and what eyes they were. Eyes so dark they looked black in the fluorescent light gazing at me with such joy and happiness they seemed to shine like something you'd see in one of those Japanese animes. Her lips were full and bruised from where they had been mashed against mine, and trembling ever so slightly, parted with something that was half joy and half lust, and all eager and inviting. Set through her eyelids, her lips, her ears, and even her cheeks were piercings of all varieties: loops, studs, dangles, the works. When she caught me studying her face, she gave a sudden effeminate squeal and latched onto me even tighter, burying her face against my neck and nuzzling me like a playful kitten while exclaiming again, "Ronnie!"

Okay, as fun as this is, I think that I better try and get her off of me. KP was standing over me completely now, towering like a titan of old above my prone form. And like a titan of old, her face promised wrath, terror, and certain doom. I'm just not sure who it was aimed at: me or this strange girl. I increase my efforts to get this squid wrapped around me off, which turned out to be of no avail. I've been in iron shackles softer than this girls grip!

"Um," I finally manage to get out. I might have been able to pry this girl off of me given enough time, but that would involve some heavy contact, and considering just how much skin was showing and just how many people were watching, that could do almost as much damage to my reputation as that time I lost my pants when giving a presentation on the serious issue of breast cancer in health class. "KP? Help?" I'm actually having trouble drawing breath now, even as the bluette continued to ignore the world around her and hummed contentedly into my neck. Actually, she had moved on from nuzzling and was now at the nibbling phase apparently. And she was apparently very good at nibbling. Oh lord, she just blew in my ear. It's a good thing that she was covering my hips with hers, otherwise I'd be reliving the most awkward years of puberty all over again.

"Alright, whoever you are," Kim came to my rescue, apparently deciding that I was innocent in this, and focusing that building head of steam of hers at my molester. "Get off of him!" She put action to words and reached down to help pry her off of me. I know the grip Kim put on this strangers shoulders. It was a pinch on the muscles of the arm, and was painful enough to make even the stoutest of men reflectively let go.

Strangely enough, it did nothing to this girl. She continued to maintain her grip. In fact, she actually moaned, and began to fret herself harder on me. Alright, this is getting way beyond awkweird. If she keeps that up either she's going to burst or I am. Either way, I'm gonna be the one walking home with my jersey pulled low to cover a wet spot on my pants.

"Oh Ronnie," the girl whispered, still nibbling at my ear despite me and Kim's best efforts to get enough distance between the two of us to slip a piece of paper. "I've missed you so much! We all have! We've been looking for you so long, and now we've finally found you! I couldn't stay away any longer; I had to be with you again." She pulled back and looked me in the eyes, her forehead resting against my own. It was a tender and intimate position, and for a second I forgot about the crowd around me, about my efforts to be able to breathe freely again, about the fact that Kim and Felix and Monique and Eric and everyone else was watching us, about the school, about everything. Her eyes, they drew me in, hypnotic and deep and for some reason familiar.

There was something familiar about her, I realized. Something I'd almost forgotten, something at the tip of my tongue.

Kim had been growing more and more insistent in her efforts to free me from this slip of a girl, and had even reached the point where she had her hands wrapped around the bare waist of my molester and had propped her foot against my own hip to give her leverage, when I touched her leg briefly. Kim started, and I waved her back, not looking at her anymore, focusing only on this strange and beautiful and oh so hauntingly familiar girl on top of me. The stranger just kept meeting my gaze, her lips quirked in a half smile, encouraging me, wanting me to recognize her, to remember her, to say her name…

And then I did. I reached up and caressed her cheek with my hand, the other settling on her waist in a feel of remembered intimacy I breathed it out in an incredulous whisper. "Stephanie?"

The smile that grew on her lips was so wide the Cheshire cat would have sued for copyright infringement. Rather than answered she just gave my lips a lick, kittenish and playful.

Kim had looked puzzled when I had motioned her to back off and surprised when it turned out I actually did know this complete stranger. And everyone in the hallway, who had taken to whispering and giggling at the spectacle before them joined her in her third emotion: that of pure shock, when I laughed out loud, wrapped my arms around the stranger, regained my feet and spun her around in pure joy. Stephanie squealed in delight, throwing her arms around my neck and kicking her legs back playfully as I spun her. She was obviously being charming, and obviously enjoying enacting the cliché reunion scene that we were playing out in front of my classmates.

"Great googly moogly! Stephanie!" I gasped out still exhilarated at my discovery. I abruptly set her down, and pushed her to arms length. She released me easily this time, and I held her shoulders as I looked her up and down, comparing this new and startlingly different figure in front of me to my memories of the girl I once knew. There were many, many obvious and very startling differences there, but beneath it all I saw the girl I once knew, nearly four years ago. "Look at you! You look great!" I enthused, forgetting for a moment that we had witnesses. Stephanie giggled coquettishly and struck a pose right out of a playboy pinup. She put her hands under her chin, spread her legs to shoulder length, and jutted her hips out to the side in an exaggerated fashion. She looked like a sex bomb waiting to go off. To go off again, and again, and again.

And that was when my mind finally caught up to me, my memories of just what had happened last time I had been with her, and what she had said a second ago. And just like that, the joy I was feeling froze, reduced itself drastically, and was joined equally by another feeling. Dread.

We had missed you. We had looked for you. We had found you. That was what she said.

Oh.

Oh shit.

Stephanie must have caught the expression on my face. The smile that had been goofy and large and stretching ear to ear like her own had died down to an ember. I tried to maintain it, for her sake at least, but considering the circumstances it must have been little more than a grimace. Her smile remained, but different from the pure joy that she had been expressing before. It was soft, and sad, and understanding. Then it quirked up and became mischievous, a devil may care but you know I won't expression that suited her well. With a flip of her wrist and a sway in her step she closed the distance between the two of us, and pushed me back against the locker. I let myself get swayed without protest, and once I was leaning against the cold metal containers, she stepped up in front of me, turned her back to me and leaned on me, grabbing my arms and wrapping them around her in a prim manner, and then snuggled back against me contentedly. I didn't pull away from this embrace, knowing it for what it was. Stephanie was trying to comfort me, in her own way.

The crowd around us was ginormous by now. Most of the expressions of those who had been here the entire time had settled into some kind of twisted combination of outright shock and outright disbelief. The new comers just had confusion on their faces. Eric was one of those. He had seen the whole thing, waiting for his girlfriend, my best friend, Kim. It was obvious that he had no idea what the heck was going on. Kim on the other hand, had blown a fuse entirely. It was actually quite possibly the funniest expression I'd ever seen her wear. She was slouched over, arms slack, and jaw agape. Her eyebrows were quirked between half raised, half narrowed, and her eyes were squinty as she tried to correlate just what the hell it was she had just seen. Even her hair was mussed from when she had obviously exerted more effort than she thought she'd need for the slip of a girl in my arm and still failed to get her off of me, only for me to willingly embrace her.

The fact that I knew someone that she didn't would have been enough to drive her into crazy protective stalker mode, but the fact that I knew someone she didn't and that the person I knew was female and attractive and apparently very intimate with me was enough to send her needle past the red, through the other end of the pressure gage and all the way back to zero apparently. I think her entire paradigm just shifted.

I didn't mind. She looked so cute standing there in obvious brain melt mode!

Stephanie obviously seemed to agree with me, and I caught her looking at me through the corner of her eyes with a smirk. Oh no, here it goes…

"She's cute!" Stephanie declared, pointing directly at Kim, and then with an innocent look on her face turned to me and asked like a little girl requesting candy from a father, "Can we share her?"

I think the entire room froze at that. Even the watchers who had no idea what was going on new enough to know that whatever was about to happen next was going to be spectacularly dramatic.

I repress a sigh, and almost can't stop myself from smiling. That was just so Stephanie.

Kim had just managed regain enough cognitive functions when Stephanie had dropped that bomb on her, and the resulting EMP wave knocked her right back out. The best she could manage after that was a long drawn out, "Huh!?"

***

I've been in some pretty strange positions in my life. I mean, I am the sidekick of a teen hero that periodically saves the world from strange demented freaks with delusions of grandeur and adequacy. But that's nothing compared to where I am now.

Sitting at a table in Bueno Nacho, with Stephanie draped over my lap in a provocative manner, alternating between trying to feed me and Rufus nachos, while my oldest friend and her current boyfriend sat opposite us, trying desperately not be freaked out by the girl draped over me.

It's a testament to just how badly this shook her up that Kim still hadn't recovered enough composure to enter either stalker mode, where she tries to pump the girl who was apparently close enough to her oldest best friend to trade spit in the middle of a crowded school hallway for information while simultaneously expressing the fact that she new sixteen forms of kung-fu and weren't afraid to use them on anyone who hurt her best friend, or indignant mode, wherein Kim would blow a fuse over the fact that this strange new girl had just offered to share me in a sexual fashion with aforementioned sixteen forms of kung-fu.

I'd never thought I'd see the day where the girl who could do anything wouldn't have a clue just what it was she was going to do.

I do have to say, that all things considered, Eric was holding up gamely through this entire process. The boy hadn't had much experience with the weird that the rest of us had, and was obviously just doing his best to keep his head above the tide of strange that was now lapping at him neck deep.

Out of everyone at the table, the only two who seemed completely oblivious to the atmosphere were, of course, Stephanie, but also Rufus. Stephanie had decided that Rufus was the cutest thing ever, and she just couldn't keep her hands off the naked little mole rat. Rufus, in response, had decided that Stephanie was the most best and awesomemess thing ever, just so long as the strange girl kept feeding him chips dipped in delicious processed cheese. Stephanie was contented to do so, all the while whispering little praises of cuteness to the happy rodent, constantly running her fingers up and down Rufus' flank and tickling his chin outrageously.

Me, on the other hand, well I was still coming to terms with the meeting of someone who I very truly thought I'd never see again and the implications of the meeting, and couldn't muster anything more cheerful than a somewhat distant look of amusement at the ensuing shenanigans.

Eric was the first to brave the tempestuous atmosphere, and for that I was forced to give him major points in the lines of either bravery, or sheer lack of self preservation. "So, how long have you two known each other?" It was just inane and unmotivated enough to work. The points go to bravery then.

"Oh me and Ronnie met way back!" Stephanie answered easily, either completely oblivious to the tension in the air, or just ignoring it. Both were viable options. She waved her hand in a flirtatious and inane gesture. "We met at camp actually!"

Her voice was bright and cheerful, and that made her comment just innocuous enough that Kim almost missed it. But even at her most distracted, Kim is still good. No matter how scrambled her brain is, she still managed to make the connection. She actually started a little bit, and her eyes widened. There was only one camp that I had ever been in, and she knew well my feelings about it.

"Camp Wannaweep?" she blurted out, startling Eric next to her. Somehow, that had been all that was needed to boot her out of her perpetual loop of discombobulation. Her eyes darted to me, and I can almost see the thoughts behind her eyes. Damn, but that girl never stops amazing me. She had made the connection almost instantly. And now, as I watch, her expression changes from that borderline between confusion about the situation to understanding.

Most people, when they make a leap like that, well I expect them to be wrong. There weren't many clues here, and it'd be easy to think the wrong thing, but there were just enough clues, when combined with an insight into my history and the natural intellectual prowess that Kim had, to get the right answer. Her eyes dart to me, and I give a little half smile, to tell her that yes, she was right.

I hated Camp Wannaeep. Nothing good came from there. It was a place of pure evil and horror.

And yes, the reason Kim had never heard about Stephanie before was that she was associated with it.

Bless her; what she did next warmed my heart. Kim leaned forward, assumed a completely relaxed and interested look on her face, and smiled at Stephanie. But behind her eyes, was a spark of readiness. I don't blame her for that. The last time Kim met someone I knew from the place of evil, they had been a mutated freak bent on changing the cheer squad into likenesses of himself. Kim was now in full mission mode. Mission: protect her best friend at all costs.

This was the first time since she had met Eric that she paid this much attention to me. Who knew all it took was for her to think that maybe some kind of freak from my past was out to get me?

And the funny part was that even though Kim had the right answer, she still didn't know the half of it.

I don't know if Stephanie caught the byplay between the two of us. Maybe she really had noticed it, maybe she didn't. Stephanie, for all that she appeared the ditsy sex-kitten, was far sharper than most would give her credit for. Kim included, I think. Whether she did or didn't, she kept right on with her explanation.

"I loved that camp! It was one of the best times of my life! The fresh air, the woods," Stephanie rambled on, while cheerfully rubbing Rufus' distended stomach with her fingers, the rodent purring quietly at her attention, while simultaneously rubbing herself against me almost as an afterthought.

"The lake?" Kim asked, seeming innocent while at the same time prepping herself for action without seeming too. All it would take is a word and Kim would be over the table between the two of us and on Stephanie like an angry god.

"Ugh, that thing? Have you ever seen it?" Stephanie snorted in disgust, waving her hand in front of her face as though chasing away the odor of something foul. "It was the most rancid thing ever! When it was free swim time, I'd pretend to be sick to keep out of that thing! I wasn't even pretending most of the time. Just looking at that brown sludgy water was enough to actually make me green enough to pass off the excuse." And right there, Kim was hamstrung. Obviously, that wasn't the response she was expecting.

Eric was the one who asked the next question. "I've never been to a camp before. What was your favorite part of it?" He had leaned forward and nabbed a leftover nacho from the pile that Rufus had all but annihilated. He gave a friendly and encouraging smile to the girl on my lap as he bit down on it. Rufus struggled valiantly in order to avenge his stolen foodstuff, but the poor little guy was so bloated that he couldn't even roll over. Stephanie seemed to find this unutterably precious, and started placing nachos laden with cheese all around the little guy, just out of his reach. Rufus would struggle valiantly to reach them, despite the fact that he was already so full he couldn't move, and would give out a plaintive little chirp of despair each time his goal eluded him.

"Well, I'd have to say the best part was the people I met," Stephanie smiled winsomely at the boy across from her, and then reached up to wrap an arm around my head and pull it down into her bountiful bosoms, smothering me with affection. Literally.

This seemed to make Kim grumpy. She absentmindedly bit down on her own food, before mumbling. "Oh? So you two were close then?" Kim seemed to be hovering at the border of an outright glare at me. I can't help but find it hypocritical, just a little, of her, but I don't rise to match it. Honestly, I'm having trouble following the conversation in any meaningful way. Which is probably why I didn't catch the wicked look Stephanie threw at me right before she dropped another bomb on the table.

"Oh yes! I've never forgotten Ronnie. After all, what kind of girl would forget her first?" She closed her eyes and let her face shift into blissful remembrance. Despite the fact that I know she had let that little tidbit slip for no other reason than to get a rise, I don't doubt for a second that the expression on her face is honest. I know Stephanie well enough to know that she truly did enjoy our time together, no matter how many have been between then and now.

Stephanie remembers everyone she's been with, and she treasures each one as though they were the only one she'd ever been with. It's in her very nature to do so.

Eric had a great deal less preconceptions about me, so he takes the news rather well. He'd been mid sip and had snorted in shock and finding out that no, I'm not a virgin, causing the soda to dribble out his nose. He coughs and thumps his chest, his nasal cavities no doubt burning from the carbonated beverage coursing through them. Kim doesn't even catch the innuendo at first, so assured in her knowledge of me that even her superior deductive capabilities miss it out of sheer inertia. She's in mid chew and turning to see what's on earth could have caused Eric to react like that when it hits her like two tons of bricks being ridden by an elephant in the middle of a landslide. Her eyes bulge out of her sockets and she turns to look at me so fast her neck audibly pops. She apparently also tried to gasp in shock, which is a really bad idea when you have a mouth full of half chewed tortilla chips.

As the two of them deal with their food burdened shock, I finally speak up. "You know, Steph, a lady never tells about that kind of thing."

Stephanie's eyes are lidded, and she shifts till she's straddling me, her arms around my shoulders, our foreheads touching and our gaze meeting. The position is familiar, like the one we were in earlier. Just like then, her eyes are captivating, and I find myself loathed to look away. From behind her, I hear a strangled noise that's the mix between a cough and a growl. We both ignore it.

And here it is. Stephanie might put on a face around the crowd, might fool others, but I know her, and I see through her. I know what she's really like, what she really is deep down inside. Beneath that soft and bouncy and oh so touchable exterior, buried in yards and yards of thoughtless yearning for the flesh and its pleasures, is something cold. Something dark. Something hungry. Something ruthless.

It was buried in both of us. The two of us, and the others. The others who now know where I am, despite years of hiding, of denying, of hoping that it was all a dream or a horrible delusion brought about by malaria or something equally improbable.

We were all, so much more and so much less than we appeared.

"But I'm not a lady," she hisses to me, soft and sibilant, with promises of more than I could ever imagine or desire, more and then some. "I'm a woman: a woman who likes the touch of my lovers, the pleasures of the flesh. It doesn't matter who they are, you know that. I like them young or old, boy or girl, it doesn't matter. But you, Ronald," she leans in whispers in my ear, her body flush against me as she does so. Kim and Eric are both frozen and red faced. Eric looks like he's embarrassed. Kim looks like she's about ready to split the table between us with one hand and tear the girl on top of me to pieces. "You were my first, the one who matters the most to me."

"The two most important are the first and the last," I answer back, my voice not a whisper but also soft. I notice my surroundings only peripherally now. The call of Stephanie's eyes are too strong for me to focus on much else.

"That's a lie, and you know it," she corrected me. "The important ones are the important ones. There's no saying which one they will be, but you know them when you find them." Though I can only see it out of the corner of my eye, Kim flinches back at that like she was struck. I pay it no attention. "Come with me," Stephanie both ordered and begged me. Her voice was thick and low and it held all the promise of paradise, all the horror of hell. It stroked the very core of me, and left me purring and wanting for more. "Come with me, and we can go back and meet the others. They miss you, you know. Then we can be together with whomever we want, whenever we want. I'm not jealous, and though I might be greedy, I can still share. Doesn't it sound wonderful? I can make every moment of your life after this ecstasy."

And she could too. Of this, I have no doubt. Poor Eric, he looked so embarrassed to be here at this moment. I don't blame him. He really has no part in this, no idea what he's so close too.

But it's the expression on Kim's face that stands out. I've never seen Kim afraid before, but I think that's what I'm seeing right now. Why would Kim be afraid?

Whatever the reason might be, my attention is on this wonderful thing resting across my lap. Gently, my fingers reach up, and trace her cheeks with their very tips. She moans and goes limp against me. Her eyes are still open, still piercing me as surely as any pointy weapon that has ever existed. My thumbs come to rest on the very edges of her mouth, the calloused pads caressing the softness of her red lips. Her mouth parts, wanting and in desire.

"That was over between us a long time ago," I whisper, and then deliberately close my eyes and bow my head. Once our eye contact was broken, the rest of the world came into focus, crisp and almost painful in its clarity. The rumble of cars passing by our window, the sizzle of the kitchen behind the counter, the bratty whining of children harassing their parents all came tumbling back on me in a heartbeat. It was nearly too much to bear for a moment, and then once more my equilibrium returned. When I opened my eyes, Stephanie again filled my vision. But instead of promise, there was regret and understanding in her face.

I heard a gentle whoosh, and glanced up to see Kim releasing a breath she had been apparently holding. Eric looked confused, but sympathetic. I can imagine what it appeared to his eyes: a parted lover, seeking to rekindle something that had long since gone out. It was close enough to be almost right, but still distant enough to be completely wrong.

"I had to ask," Stephanie told me, and her voice had none of the promise that so often fills it. There was only acceptance there, and compassion.

"I know." I give her a half hearted grin, which she returns. Then, in one smooth and graceful movement she got off my lap and stood next to the table. Taking only a moment to adjust her rather minimal clothing, she turned to the table and smiled.

"It was good seeing you again Ron. And it was nice meeting the two of you, Kim, Eric," she nodded to each of our companions.

For some reason, Kim's response seemed reserved. "It was nice meeting you too, Stephanie." There was something in that voice that sounded almost like compassion. I couldn't imagine what for. Eric just nodded, obviously uncomfortable with the whole situation, and glad it was apparently ending.

Stephanie turned to give me one last look before speaking. "The others are eager to see you again. They should be dropping by soon, once I let them know I found you."

"I won't tell you to say hi for me. I'll save that for when I see them," I smile at her. And with one last saucy look and without a farewell, she walked out of the restaurant and into the darkening late afternoon.

***

"Ron." It was dark out and I was standing outside my house, gazing at the stars. I had been distracted by my own thoughts, so I hadn't noticed her coming. When I glance over at her, I almost startle. It was KP all right, but I'd never seen her like this before.

She looked delicate. That was the only way to describe her at the moment. I glanced at the clock by the door leading into my house. It was late, or early, depending on how you look at it. I'd been on the hanging bench on the small patio behind my house for hours, so focused on my thoughts that the marching of time had gone by without me taking notice. I was dressed for bed, having been bound for that destination originally. It was just that the impact of the day had denied me Morpheus' respite. Apparently it had done the same for Kim. She was in ruffled clothes, and had the look of someone who had been tossing and turning on a proper bed for sometime before seeking the comfort of the night around her. It was mid spring, and the air held the lingering touch of the chill or winter, mixed with the promise of summer's warmth.

"Hey, KP," I responded. She was clutching a robe around her. Not really appropriate outer wear, but we lived close enough, and it was late enough, that she had probably just thrown it on when she had come to seek me out in the middle of the night. "I bet I can guess what brings you here tonight." I give her a half grin, small but genuine, and pat the creaking bench next to me in invitation. She gives me an answering smile, and accepts my invitation, but then the weight of her thoughts presses the smile away. I look at her, and she looks away, apparently lost or embarrassed about what was going to come next.

"So, what's the sitch on that girl today? Stephanie?" she finally manages to get out. It's just vague enough to not sound like an interrogation, but it still managed to come out as an accusation. It doesn't surprise me. We'd been friends for so long, and shared so many secrets between us, that finding out there was something or someone so important to me that I'd never revealed to her was no doubt a revelation.

I can't help but think it goes deeper than that. As much as I love Kim, and I do love my KP, she's never been quite able to consider me in any kind of "masculine" or "sexual creature" sort of way. The fact that I don't date, and always seem to miss the signals that females send me has no doubt enhanced that fiction to her. For a brief moment, I felt irritation at that, and couldn't stop myself from taking a cheap shot. "You mean besides the fact that we'd had sex?"

She did jerk at that. "I, I didn't think that…I mean I thought she was lying…"

"You didn't think that someone like me would ever actually get with someone? That I'd either die a virgin or end up having to pay for it at some street corner?" I cut her hard with that comment, and I can see it. She was obviously torn between taking offense to my tone and feeling ashamed because she knew that deep down that was something she'd always considered. That her best friend was nothing more than an asexual entity whose entire world revolved around pleasing her and existing in strictly platonic and supportive role. She gathered herself to either deny my accusation or start an argument, and I cut her off. "Don't. KP I've always made it a point not to dig into what you do with your boyfriends. I have no idea what the farthest you've gone with anyone is, and don't particularly want to know. It's always been your business. This," I wave a hand gesturing to the air around me to symbolize the whole sitch, "is my business. I don't believe in kiss and telling, and whoever I'm with and whatever I do with them is no one's business but mine. Not my parents, not god, not the media, not the people at school, no one. Not even yours, Kim." I say the last sentence gently. I'm not trying to make any acquisitions, but this is just one of the things I feel strongly about.

"You didn't trust me enough to tell me?" she asked, sounding desperate to find some reason to turn this back on me. I think she realized that she's being more than a little insensitive about this whole mess. Now she's trying to find some reason to justify her actions today, her responses: some way to be able to justify her misconduct without having to acknowledge it.

"It's not trust. It's just not anyone's business but me and whoever I'm with." I tell her this firmly, and then sigh. Throughout the conversation she had hunched further and further and drawn her legs up to wrap her arms around them. She looked positively miserable. I reach over and put one of my hands on her knees. That made her glance at me out of the side of her eyes. "If it makes you feel better, before today the only ones who ever knew it were the ones who I'd been with."

Rather than calm her down, her eyes widen even more, and her head jerks up. "Ones? As in plural?"

I give her a half smirk. "Stephanie was my first, but she wasn't my only." This causes Kim's mouth to gape. I really am rocking her world today.

"You….You gigolo!" she squawks, and then reaches over and starts smacking me on the head lightly. I start laughing and rolling around trying to protect my head. Her expression is a glare, but not a heated one.

"Hey! Quit it! Quit it! Not the hair, not the hair!" I blurted while waving my hands in the air to try and intercept hers while they were on the way to my head. She had twisted her body so she was kneeling on the bench, and our actions were causing the suspended seat to rock back and forth. Finally, she deemed me punished enough for the crime of having a social life, and sits back with a huff, folding her arms under her chest and pouting. Oh, the fearsome presence that is Kimzilla!

I lean back as well, tossing my arms over the back of the bench, and finding my eyes drawn again to the night sky. It was clear, but you couldn't make too many of the pinprick points of light out: to much visual pollution from the surrounding neighborhood. Kim seemed to notice the way my attention kept wandering, and then broached the second thing that had no doubt drawn her over tonight.

"You know, back when you first recognized her, Stephanie, you seemed really happy." She noted, watching me carefully. "Then all of a sudden you looked a lot less happy. Almost scared." KP had obviously taken my scolding of her jumping to conclusions earlier seriously. Now she seemed almost diffident with her questions. Like she was just making observations, not questioning me. "And afterwards, when we were at Bueno Nacho, when she made that…" she trails off for a second, looking distraught and twitching momentarily before finally settling on her next word, "offer, you looked sad."

I stayed silent, letting the chirp of crickets and the whistle of the wind stay predominant for the moment, before sighing. "Back at Camp Wannaweep, there were six of us." My words had the tone of a confession, and the volume of a whisper. Kim leaned in so she could hear me, her eyes wide and encouraging. This was a new story to her, and she no doubt realized how hard it must be for me to speak of it. I had no trouble recounting endless horror stories of that wretched place, and she had heard them all probably a dozen times by now. That I had never mentioned this one, well she probably rightfully concluded that this was the worst of them. "We were…" I trailed off, searching for the words and then found them, "the geeks, the losers. The lowest of the low. The ones no one wanted to talk to or have anything to do with."

Kim reached up and took my arm from behind the chair and wrapped my hand in both of hers. "You are not a loser, Ron Stoppable!" She said it so fiercely that it made me smile.

"Yes, I kind of am. But that's not important," I cut her off with a grin. "Normally when you're the lowest on the food chain, you kind of avoid the other low ones, you know? The whole try not to get all the people that will get picked on in the same spot so that the bullies have to hunt for you kind of thing. But there was one of us losers who wouldn't have anything to do with it. He went out of the way to get us all together, to make sure we all knew each other, to have someone to talk to, that kind of thing. He was a real organizer kind of guy. Before we knew it, we were all having a great time! Even with all the bugs, and the lake, and the poison ivy, and the monkey…" here I trail off and shudder. There are just some things you never get over. Lousy monkeys….

"Sounds spankin'," Kim grinned at me. The idea appealed to her. Organizing and enjoying yourself regardless of what everyone else might think. That was her save the world for everyone first impulse kicking in.

"It was pretty awesome," I acknowledge, mustering at best a half grin. "Which is why when it all went sideways that it sucked twice as much afterwards." Kim tilted her head and patiently waited for me to continue. She had to have known that it was going to go sideways. If anything good had happened there, then I wouldn't have hated the place as much as I do. "He…well, the thing is…" I trail off, and growl, feeling my emotions heat up at the memory. Anger, fear, shame, regret. There's no way I'm going to be able to express them all so eloquently and so suddenly. I finally settled on, "There was an argument. A big one. Like massive, mushroom cloud afterwards kind of argument. Not between all of us," I add, rubbing one hand through my hair reflectively, mussing it up more than it usually is. "Just between me and him. The other's got caught in the back of it, and when it came down to it they had to choose between siding with me or siding with him."

"And I can guess the reason I've never heard of any of them is because you weren't the one they sided with," Kim concluded. I gave a snort.

"Yeah. They didn't want to have to pick. We were all really close for what little time we had together. But a line had been drawn in the sand, and in the end, they weren't standing on my side of it."

Kim forebode all sense of propriety at that, and she hugged me tightly, trying to offer me comfort for something that happened nearly four years ago. I accepted that comfort gratefully. Who cares if it had been four years ago, it still freaking hurt. I continued while we hugged. "I avoided them the rest of camp. When it was time to go, I wouldn't give them any way to contact me, and then left. The four of them, the ones I didn't have the argument were sad or angry. But the one I had the fight with, the one who got us all together in the first place, well he just told me he'd see me again someday."

"He sounds like a jerk. Kind of like Gil," she told me, her voice tickling in my ear. I shook my head as best I could.

"No. He really wasn't. It's just…" I trail off again, not knowing how to express exactly what he was.

"The argument," Kim murmured, pulling back finally. She kept my arm around her shoulder, and leaned against me. It was a casual kind of intimacy, a sign of our comfort around each other physically. She rubbed her shoulders against my ribs, trying to fluff me up like a pillow while she made herself comfortable. "You want to talk about it?"

She really was trying to adjust to the sudden change of her perception of me. She had asked me if I wanted to talk about it, not just flat out what it was about.

"Not right now," I tell her. She glances up at me and smiles. She knows that someday I'll talk to her about it, and her doubts about my honesty with her were set aside. She'd accepted that there might be a few things I'll not talk about, even with her, but she could make her peace with that.

We sat together, and the calm of the night enveloped us externally.

Internally, things were very different for me. So many things I knew were coming, so many things that I wish I could tell her, confess to her, to beg her to forgive me for, to plead with her to help save me from.

But I say nothing.

How does one ask for help, when one has already promised their very soul to the ruinous powers of the Elder Gods of Chaos? When one had, in a fit of youthful ignorance, sworn themselves body and mind to the forces of annihilation and apocalypse and degradation and wretchedness?

Because that, on that dark night a Camp Wannaweep, was exactly what the six of us had done.

There are cold places in side of me now. Dark places. Hungry places. Ruthless places.

And now, finally after all these years, those places were going to come to light.


	2. Khorne

Ruinous

Author's note. Chapter 2 of Ruinous is up, obviously, seeing as you're reading it. This one has a bit more vulgarity in it than most of my work, so if that's offensive to you, well you've been warned. Disclaimer: not mine, for more on that news breaking story see chptr 1's disclaimer. And on a personal note, I've noticed that I have trouble writing Rufus. I love the little guy, don't get me wrong, but I always forget to put him in till that last moment. A shame.

Khorne

I glance left, and then right, desperately searching for an exit. The chase had been long, furious, and desperate, but finally, my crafty adversaries had cornered me. A trickle of sweat dripped down my brow as I backed away, my eyes desperately shifting for the last elusive avenue of exit. This is it, crunch time, if only they missed something, just one hole, one egress, and I'm gone. With dawning horror, I realize that there is no escape. Their attack pattern was perfect, no doubt from long practice. We've done this dance before, and as slow as they are, at long last they had learned from their mistakes and could now anticipate my moves, read all my feeble attempts.

I was trapped. With a desperate glance I looked for someone to help, someone to come to my aide.

Instead I met with the snickering of the rest of the hall way as the D-hall thugs finally cornered me.

Man. And they were serving double cheese cardboard…I mean pizza… today at the cafeteria too!

I'd never gotten their names. They'd never been too interested in talking, no matter how much I'd try to engage them in negotiations. And try I had. Alas, to some the lost art of diplomacy remains just that, lost.

"Hey loser," the tall one, with a thuggish appearance and simian brow said, drawling out the 'hey' and doing his absolute best to appear intimidating. You know, if I didn't come into regular contact with death rays, mutants, and monkeys (shudder!) it might almost be as unnerving as he no doubt intended, but hey it probably has a nice effect on the other kids these two wannabe gangstas extort from.

"Wha'cho thinking about, walking down D-hall like you own the place? Everyone knows we be the ones who be ownin' the place!" the other one couldn't pull of intimidating if he was rabid and carrying a machete. Mainly because the machete would be bigger than him. I mean, jeesz, he's a senior by now! Why oh why hadn't the little guy had a growth spurt that would at least get him higher than my waist?

The dreaded D-hall bullies. What a great way to start the day.

"Hey guys," I give them a weak grin. "Great weather we've been having isn't it? Nothing says the start of summer like a lovely day, right?"

"It's been raining for the last three days and the weather report says it's gonna rain for another three more," the small one snorts. The tall one cracks one of his shoulders. It's a move that looks vaguely painful to watch, but he thought it made him look tough, so it was virtually trademarked to the ape. Seriously, there must be some kind of monkey in this guys recent family tree. Maybe Monkey Fist got a little frisky with this guys mom a while back, and this poor bastard is the result? Could be. I'll mention it to the super villain next time we're duking it out. Strange word, 'duking'. Wonder where it came from…

"Hey, loser," the possible love child of my arch-foe says, "don't you got something for us?"

Sighing, I dig into my pocket for my decoy money. This two aren't exactly the brightest bulbs in the bunch, so they've never really correlated that I keep enough change in my pocket to buy a soda with, and use it to buy them off. I don't think these two are even bright enough to figure out that if I'm giving them all my money every day, why is it I still eat like a prince every lunch anyway? Honestly, I'm willing to give them the damn fifty cents everyday just so they screw off afterwards. I consider it asshole tax. A tax I'm perfectly willing to pay, if only to get these two throwbacks to go the hell away and brighten my day with their absence. Though, they might try to be clever afterwards and throw me into the girl's locker room in an attempt to humiliate me. Ha! Like having a valid excuse to stare at a bunch of half dressed chicks is in some way humiliating or degrading? Hell, half the girls there actually feel sorry for me! These two have given me more sympathy points with the female population of this school than they could ever realize! I just have to look flushed and embarrassed while it's occurring, and in return I get an eyeful of the goods! A Boo. A Yah.

The amusing part is that throughout all of this, traffic continues to march in D-hall. The steady stream of students gives nothing more than an amused glance from most, and a sympathetic one from the rest. This is almost a tradition in Middleton High, and one that just about everyone is aware of. I think some of the science clubs actually use it to set their watches too. They swear it's almost as regular as atomic decomposition or something. Felix actually gives me a nod as he hums by in his chair, stopping at a locker no more than six feet away and opening it like nothing is going on. Monique is by his side, and she waves, all the while chatting up a storm with the wheel bound fellow. I give them a nod, even as I dig into my pockets.

The only one who doesn't treat this so sanguinely is Kim. It's been a few days since the Stephanie incident, and for the last few she's been treating me differently. It's like she's been keeping an eye on me, studying me like a specimen in a beaker. I know how much it shook her up, to find out something like that about me, and how much that she once had taken for granted that she's now studying hard, trying to find other things about me she misread. It's been affecting her so much that it's actually cut through her previously impenetrable 'hottie haze': the complete and all consuming euphoria and obsession that always accompanies her crushes on whatever sweet, sensitive, good looking, and 'golden' boy she's currently making doe eyes at. Oh, she's still crushing hardcore, but now I get maybe a fourth of her time.

At least Eric is taking the sudden cut in his couple time well. He seems to understand that there are things the two of them being an item can't eclipse, and no matter how poor the showing was at first. Me and Kim's friendship is one of those things that just isn't going to disappear or be outshone. He even had a chance to shine through with his good-guy-ness by inviting me along with her on a few outings. None of the romantic ones, but we have all bonded together over a couple of movies. I think all three of us laughed ourselves silly on opening night of "Brickening 7, The Advent of the Pueblo", and then gorged ourselves silly on nacos afterwards. The two of them still do private stuff together, and I make sure to give them their space when it happens. I think Kim realizes just how awesome I've always been about giving her space in regards to dating, now that she knows just how hard it is not to stick your nose into it. She actually thanked me for it flat out a day or two ago. It was at her house, in the wreckage that was Possible Pizza Night, shortly after Eric had excused himself for the night. The tweebs had moaned about cooties, Mr. Dr. P had been a bit puzzled by the comment, and Mrs. Dr. P had beamed. I think Mrs. Dr. P had been the only one to truly appreciate just what that innocuous statement had been about. I have a feeling that Mrs. Dr. P had a great deal of knowledge about the situation, no doubt due to Kim always going to her when it came to boy advice. I just hope they had done it in person, and not via speaker phone whilst amidst a surgery. Eesh, the things Mrs. Dr. P's colleagues no doubt knew about me and Kim…

Anyway, like I was saying. Kim's down the hallway, in full cheer regalia and midst conversation which is no doubt as trying as my own situation with Bonnie, when she glances over and sees me in the middle of shake down. Her eyes narrow and I see her straighten up even as she continues her debate with the queen bee herself. In the past, she would have just brushed this off, shaking her head at the no doubt amusing to the female gender antics of those of us who contain more testosterone then common sense. Now though, she's feeling her previous lack of attention to my person more keenly than in the past. That part of her that has always been complacent and confident in our status quo had been pricked, and suddenly something that had been almost common place and laughable to her is no longer quite so unnoticeable. Kim was no doubt suddenly faced with the realization that her best friend is being mugged in front of her face and she was doing nothing about it. The twitch that hits her after that has as much indignation as shame. She had never done anything about it before, save that one time when she was forced to deal with it herself while we were in the middle of a body/brain crises. Even then, afterwards, she hadn't even given it a second thought. Out of sight, out of mind, even when it was in sight.

Now it's apparently nowhere near out of mind for her.

Still, as I watch her start to build a head of steam, I turn back to hand over my tax to these wannabe no-do-gooders, and I'm suddenly forced to freeze completely.

Oh. Oh shit.

I'm not sure what the two wannabes were thinking when they saw me freeze up while glancing over their shoulders. It's not like I'd never used that tactic before. The whole, 'oh my god what in the world is that!' coupled with a 'run the hell away the moment their back is turned' is a tried and true and very effective tool in my acumen. Unfortunately for them, this time was no ploy.

"Nice try dweeb," short one snorted, shifting about as he spoke. I'm not sure if it's just him getting into the stereotype of the whole 'small but quick' or if he really was just so in love with the bad-guy culture that he was on speed. "Hurry up and cough up the goods." Either way, it wasn't gonna matter for much longer, all things considered.

The large meaty hand that drops down on both of their shoulders is proof enough of that.

The two both jerked, and turned at that. Apparently this is routine enough that the two of them had long since forgone the thought that someone else might actually get involved in this ritualistic transaction. And when they both turn, they turn with a sneer and arrogance, ready to cut down whichever uncool loser had decided to stand up for another uncool loser.

And then they both had to glance up. And up again. And in the case of the midget-wannabe, up two more times after that. I think the monkey guy gulped.

The giant towering over them was the very picture of everything that is behemoth, leviathan, titan, and above all else wrathful. And that giant was currently looking more than a little pissed off.

Once he had the two D-hall thugs full and undivided attention, as well as the attention of a good number of hallway travelers, he shifted his grip to the front of the two would be muggers' shirts, tightened his grip, and lifted both of them off the ground and to eye level with his own giant self. In the case of the short one, that left a good five or six feet between the midget's toes and the ground. It also captured the attention of a great deal more of the hallway traffic.

Finally, the moving landmass in front of me spoke. Well, speaking might be a little generous. It was more like the sound of two boulders grinding against each other and somehow imitating comprehensible speech in the midst of the resulting noise.

"What. The fuck. Do you two. Think you're doing?" And that right there quieted the rest of the hallway. The f-bomb was infrequently dropped in the sacred halls of Middleton High. The dread presence of commodore Barkin ensured that. But then again, the ones who dropped it didn't look like they could take both Steel Toe and Pain King simultaneously and have time to pick their teeth with their enemies' bones afterwards. This guy did have the look of someone who could do aforementioned feet that is.

If I hadn't already run into Stephanie, and hadn't been anticipating the visits by the rest, it would have taken me even longer to figure out just who this was.

"Hey, Jason," I said, waving at him. He glanced away from the prey he was holding, who suddenly realized that, hey, maybe picking on the kid who knew a brute that was roughly the size of a minivan wasn't a good idea, and aforementioned hulk smiled at me.

"Hey Ron. Long time no see." I could interpret his grin as being pleased and happy. I think everyone else in D-hall wasn't quite as capable when it came to figuring out this new guy's mood.

I think a cheerleader or two might have fainted.

The guy who was currently suspending my aggressors looked almost vaguely like the sumo ninja me and Kim had fought a while ago. If that sumo ninja had compressed every spare pound that had once been girth into muscle. Jason, which was his name, had the kind of muscles that you'd expect to find on the guy who killed Batman. They didn't look like corded steel, or the kind of sculpted aesthetics you'd find on a built model. No, the tendons that covered this one looked like hardwood, etched with veins. This was what you'd expect to see on the biggest steroid juicer in the world. Every inch of him was so knotted with hard flesh that it was over the edge of grotesque. This was the kind of ideal you only expect from the most depraved of body builders. His clothing, a pair of tattered and stained jeans topped by an equally stained and tattered wife-beater, all covered, barely, by another, you guessed it, stained and tattered trench coat with the sleeves torn of it to better revealed the pure corded mass which was his arms.

Arms which were currently holding two increasingly nervous juvenile delinquents. Their nervousness only increased as the gargoyle holding them growled and said, "I asked you once: What the fuck do you two think you're doing?" The grin he had given me had faded away by now, and the only thing left on his face could only be accurately described as 'murderous'.

Oh boy. This is gonna get ugly.

The small one spoke up, all bravado. He obviously wasn't the smart one of the two, and seemed to have some kind of assumption going for him that he was invincible. The poor deluded fool. "What the heck you care? We just getting our dues from the loser!"

Oh shit again.

"Jason," I say quickly, "I really don't think you should do what you're about to do…"

I am just as quickly ignored. The bigger one, Monkey Fist's alleged bastard child, only had time for a quick gulp, and than Jason growled. It was the kind of noise you'd expect to hear from junkyard machinery, just before it decimates tons upon tons of steel.

The end result could be compared to that kind of damage. Unfortunately, the poor creatures about to be subjected to it don't have the durability that a car frame in a compactor does.

I think what happens next is another highlight of this schools existence that I was inadvertently a participant off. The first was Stephanie's PDA. This one on the other hand, was pure violence.

Even before I had finished speaking, Jason had reacted. His response was almost eloquent in its simplicity. He slammed both of the two juvenile delinquents faces together with such force that their teeth almost universally shattered against the face of the other. Then, in the sudden horrified silence that ensued, he threw the smaller one to the other side of the hallway. The noise the little guy made as he slammed into the locker echoed like a gunshot through the hallway. There was so much power behind the throw that there was a noticeable dent left in the locker of impact. If one listened hard enough one could make out the sound of what was undoubtedly bones breaking from the impact. Even while the one who had been flung was falling to the ground, the giant had lifted the other one, the monkey guy, off the ground and duplicated the impact dent in the nearer locker, driving the bigger guys frame into the locker nearly four inches by my inexpert opinion.

Silence reigns in the hallway, broken only by gasps of horror and shock.

What had been going on with me earlier was routine. It was the norm. It was obvious, yet understated. It was common.

This was a far, far cry from common. This was brutality, given shape. This was violence given form. It was a train wreck, stretching out before the eyes of a populace whose only experience with brutal depravity like this was the laughable images that appear in movies and on TV. But the reality of it, displayed before them was so much more than anything they were prepared for. The spray of blood that squirted from wounds, the misshapen appearance of broken bones and limbs. All of it added up to paint a portrait a far a great deal askance of the usual view of reality that most of these viewers had ever seen.

It was when Jason dropped ape-boy and moved to kick midget-boy that finally someone reacted. And of course, the first one to have some thought in their head besides blank incomprehension was none other than Kim. Even as Jason reared back to deliver a boot that would no doubt break even more ribs of the poor vertically challenged fellow, another foot intercepted his face.

Kim had charged down the hallway, and leapt, delivering a punishing flying kick to the side of Jason's face. It would have been impressive, if it weren't for science.

See, science has these things. They're called inertia. And mass. And I think science has this other thing about how one can't be overcome by the other unless the other has enough of the first.

Science isn't my strong point. The bottom line is that when Kim's very slim, albeit fast moving form struck Jason's very large albeit stationary form, there just wasn't enough behind that boot to the face to actually move the juggernaut that it had hit. Kim actually bounced of Jason's face, and landed on the ground shakily, trying to recover her composure at the obvious ineffectiveness of her attack.

Jason didn't have that moment of doubt. Even as he tensed to strike, I tensed to interact. I could stand by while he was hitting two people that I admitably didn't like, but if he dared lay a finger on Kim, well then, that was a different matter.

Luckily for all of us, he paused even as he reached the apex of his chambering. His rough face bent down, and peered at Kim, even as the dwarfed cheerleader recollected herself and prepared for combat.

"You." The statement wasn't a question, but an accusation. "You're Kim Possible." When Kim's face betrayed her acknowlgement of that statement, Jason stopped completely. With the ponderous grace of a mountain in motion, the giant stepped back, and released the ruined form of ape-boy from his enormous hands.

"What's it too you, big boy?" Kim challenged. She had obviously gone into full blown mission mode. I don't blame her. This is the kind of thing you'd expect to see on a mission. In all honesty, it is the kind of thing we have seen on missions. Not all of our escapades have ended happy, healthy, and whole for all the participants. We don't just deal with evil villains and diabolical plans. We've had our fair share of natural catastrophes too. And after you've dug poor innocent bystanders out of landsides or tsunamis, and seen just what it is nature can do to a man, than one becomes a little less swayed just by standing near a poor stupid high school punk who pissed off the wrong guy and ended up on the business end of a locker.

Jason decided to answer her. "I fucking hate you." It was short, concise, and to the point. Points for eloquence.

"Awww, and whys that? Because you know that I'm going to put you down?" Oh yeah. Kim isn't seeing a high school drama right now. She's seeing another escapade in the freak brigade. I don't blame her. Jason is, well, he's huge. Not the kind of huge you'd expect from a jock that just happens to have the natural build to play foot ball. This is the kind of huge that calls to mind demi-gods battling in the far reaches of time. This was freaking Hercules huge. This was Gilgamesh huge.

"Because he left us for you!" was Jason's rebuttal. He roared it, while gesturing to me, indicating just who it was that had done the leaving. I think if the audience hadn't already been frozen by the damage done earlier, this little bit of drama would have sent them into paralysis all on its own. Kim didn't quite flinch at that, but she drew back none the less, unable to comprehend just what it was this hulk before her was saying. The behemoth continued, his words a deep growl. "Back in the day, all he would talk about was you. How great you were, how awesome, how amazing. And when he left, he went back to you. And what do you do with that kind of loyalty? You spit on it."

Jason is shaking with repressed rage. He looks like he's about to unleash himself at the slim redhead in front of him. The only reason he doesn't is because I'm standing directly behind her, and when he looks at her he sees me behind her. I'm leaning against the locker, one leg propped up, arms crossed. I'm the very picture of relaxation, giving no sign of anything that might resemble discomfort to being so close to two very damaged bullies or a what promises to be an incredibly brutal battle. The only sign that I'm paying attention is in my eyes, and when he meets them with his own, he knows that I might be willing to let this play out, but not if that involves him assaulting my Kim.  
And Jason, for all that his size would inspire the thought of the clichés of dim witted giants, is definitely not an idiot.

"What?" Kim said sharply, reacting to the words as if they were a physical blow.

"You heard me, you bitch. Look at these two," and without taking his eyes of his foe he kicks the downed form of ape-bully. The force of the blow, even from a dead stand, was enough to lift him off the floor and send him six feet down the hallway. "Right in front of you, they're robbing your friend, and what do you do? Ignore it? Just like everyone else?" with this he glares around the rest of the hallway. "Just like all these other pieces of shit. Laughing as my friend get's shook down, and bullied." He snorts, then spits to the side. The glob of phlegm lands on the small bully, who is whimpering in agony and doesn't even notice mark of disdain. "I should show you all just what it feels like." His growl is becoming louder, and his fingers clench, popping audibly in the silence of the hallway. "I should track every last one of you here down. I should find you in the middle of the night, in dark alleys and empty parking lots," his raises, a deep and sepulcher rumbling that brings to minds earthquakes and landslides and all the things that Mother Nature can do to our fragile bodies. "Then we'll see who thinks this is so fucking funny."

"It's not like that!" Kim finally blurts out. What he had said had definitely shook her. Almost as much as when Stephanie had dropped that bomb of hers not to long ago. She glances desperately at me, but then looks away, guiltily not able to deny it even to herself.

I rub the back of my head sheepishly, "Well, it kind of is, but that's not important right now," I mumble, and she flinched again. She definitely didn't want to hear that right now, but it was the truth, and trying to deny it would only make her self-condemnation that much fiercer. Looks like we're going to have another talk soon. I'll take care of that when it's time. I raise my voice and address Jason. "Hey, Jason, maybe you should take a deep breath and a chill pill real quick. I mean, nobody here wants things to get out of hand, now do…"

And right there, in the middle of my calm carefully constructed argument designed to defuse this ticking time bomb before it blows stumbles the worst possible person to show up.

"Stoppable!" Barkin barked, finally managing to find his way to the scene. He eyed me like a dog would eye a big juicy steak. He had heard about me and Stephanie's earlier indiscretion, and I swear he had wept to god afterwards for having missed the chance to land me in detention for the rest of my natural life. Well here's his chance now. His eyes were so focused on me that he didn't notice the other very important element of this sitch till he almost tripped on it. When he looked down to see what ever it was that was trying to impede his time with the Ron-man, his eyes widened at the immobile and broken form of the D-hall bully.

"Cheese and crackers, man! What the in the Sam hey is going on here!" And, like clockwork Barkin did, what to him, what must come naturally. Blamed me. "Stoppable! You better have a darn fine explanation for this…"

Of course, that was probably the worst possible choice of responses. Especially when in the presence of an over protective friend who packed the rough body mass of a rhino and was already half way worked up to a berserk period. Jason slammed one of his ham sized fists into the locker next to him, and his already impressive growl deepened into a full blown snarl.

"This is pathetic! And where was this maggot when he should have been helping one of his students?! Nowhere! He only shows up after he should have been doing his job and stopping these two worms, and the first thing he does is blame the victim!" Barkin's jaw cracks shut at that accusation, and finally notices just who the two laying on the ground are. Jason's accusations are unfair in this case too. Barkin does have a thing for these two. They spend more time in detention than I do, and that's saying a lot, all things considered. Jason either doesn't know this, or doesn't care. He's shaking now, his rage reaching its peak. "You deserve the same as the rest of them! To see what it's like!" There isn't a soul in this hallway now besides me and Jason that isn't scared. This was the kind of frightening you hear about on the news, the kind of breakdown that fuels every media covered horror story about the day a student or employee snaps and takes out their fellow student or employees in an orgy of mayhem and blood.

Alright, talking seems to be out of the question now. There's only one way to calm Jason down when he gets like this.

I kicked off the locker with as much force as I could muster, and slammed the heel of my shoe hard into Jason's shin. The suddenness of my unexpected attack caught him by surprise, and he let out a noise that could most accurately be called 'a startled eep' as his balance was knocked out from under him. In the same motion I caught one of his arms, twisting the grizzled appendage around and behind him, forcing his fall to turn his face to the wall of lockers. And then in the same motion I grabbed the back of his head with one hand, planted my feet and put my entire body behind it.

The resulting impact of his face against the metal echoed through the hallway. The watchers who had just a second ago been inching away in fear could no longer do anything but gape at the sudden turn of the situation. I wasn't finished yet though. I might not know sixteen forms of kung-fu, like some people do, but I do have a smidgen of ninjitsu, and a whole lot of experience in fights. I spun on the ball of my foot, leapt and swung the back of my foot in a tight fast circle that ended with my shoe connecting with the back of Jason's head. His face had already left a dent in the thin metal of the storage container, and the added force of my brutal boot-to-the-head head technique drove it even further. He was now embedded nearly up to his ears in the door, and one of the hinges popped off as the now warped metal put too much strain on it for it to hold its shape.

I slouched back against the locker next to him, ignoring the stunned double take that was almost universally causing everybody who had witnessed my own sudden act of violence as their heads swiveled from the now fallen behemoth to me. They really can't be blamed for that. The only person here who had ever seen me do anything like that was Kim, and even then, it was a rare occurrence. I don't like exerting myself too much. It interferes with my marinating. Kim was the first one to recover from her shock because of that experience, and she was already beginning to grin at my success at stopping more blood from staining the floor. Barkin did nothing but blink, then closed his mouth and quirked his eyebrow, his hands clasped behind his back as he did his best drill instructor posture.

Before either of them could say anything, I had to burst their bubble of pride. I kept my eyes focused on Jason and said, "Amp down honey, you're scaring the kids."

Jason's frame began to shake, and he put his hands up and braced himself against the wall before pushing, and pulling his face out of its new and surprisingly accurate steel mold with an audible clang. His nose was visibly broken, and leaking blood, and as he bent over, cradling it in one hand, he began to shake even harder. I saw Kim gulp, and take up a ready stance again, no doubt anticipating this apparently unstoppable juggernauts rage at being sucker punched like that.

Instead, a sound began to emit from the hunched giant. It took the rest of the hallway a second to identify it, and when they did, it weirded them out even more than they no doubt already were.

Laughter. This stranger had just had his face cave in a solid sheet of steel, and he was laughing! That probably freaked them out almost as much as the two bodies did.

"You sneaky little string bean!" Jason accused me, even as he rumbled with mirth. With one hand, mid sentence, he straightened his nose with an audible pop. "Sucker punching me like that!"

"It was either that or watch you beat up everyone here. I like some of them, so I couldn't exactly let that slide." He reached out, and I clasped his hand with mine. He pulled me into a crushing man hug, clasping his other arm on my shoulder hard enough to rattle my knees. I imitated the gesture, though I doubt it affected him as much.

"You could have just told me which ones to avoid. I could have done that," he protested.

"And you wouldn't have heard me. You were about to go all berserker on them," I reminded him. This seemed to break the rest of the hallway out of their paralysis. Some student's out right fled, while others lingered. Some of the lingerers watched Jason carefully, as though trying to decide if he was really safe to be around now that I had apparently knocked some sense into him. Some of the others were giving medical attention to the two almost forgotten victims from earlier. Some, hovered just out of reach, apparently trying to decide if they should approach me. Most of the ones in this group were people who knew me. And most of them looked ashamed of themselves. Apparently Jason had made an impression earlier, both with his accusations about the others not coming to my aid, and with his promise to deliver to them exactly what I had gotten with interest. Kim was one of these. She stood one arm across her midriff and clutching her other arm's elbow. She was alternating between looking at the ground and looking at me briefly. I could see she wanted to say something, but didn't know what.

Barkin didn't have any hesitation in approaching. "Young man, you need to come with me."  
He was addressing Jason, and his attempt at looking intimidating should have looked laughable. Jason towered over him head and shoulders. Barkin didn't let that bother him. He stood resolute and ramrod straight, somehow managing to not be overshadowed by the giant teen in front of him.

"Screw off, old man. I'm not one of these poor little bastards that you can lord over like the wannabe tyrant you are," Jason rumbled back. Without another pause he gave me a look, one I could interpret as 'I'll catch up with you later,' and then turned his back on everyone and made his exit down the hall. On the way he managed to step on the monkey bully with his heavy boots, making the downed boy gasp in response. All of the other students between him and the exit spread out of his way in an instant. Some of the meeker ones pressed themselves fully back against the wall, as though if they somehow ended up to close to this vengeful avatar of violence they might catch his attention and bring his ire down on them too.

Everyone in the crowd watched till he was out of sight, and then as though rehearsed they all turned back to the only one who seemed to have a clue what just happened. I shrugged helplessly. "So. Who's about ready to hit the cafeteria?"

***

"Ugh. What a day," I groaned. An answering, albeit undefined, groan rose from my walking partner. School had finally let out, though there was precious little learning going on after the incident. Most of the day had consisted of called parents, police statements, and loud threatening noises made in my direction. Contrary to what Jason had implied, Barkin had been studious about not blaming this on me. Maybe what Jason had suggested had made an impact on him, or maybe it's just because Barkin holds true to the tough but fair approach. I kind of doubt the latter one, seeing as I'm almost positive that half the reasons I end up with detention from him seem way too minor for them to really be worthy of after hours and I'm almost positive that it's against school regulations in the first place to single out a student just to give them extra homework. Maybe it's just because of who was actually victimized. Barkin does take a sadistic glee in seeing people get what's coming to them sometimes. The thought that maybe this would scare the two miscreants straight might have crossed his mind.

"I can't believe what that officer was trying to imply!" Kim huffed, looking red in the face with anger. She had been more than a little lost right after the incident, no doubt going over Jason's haranguing over and over again, blaming herself for having never done what the big teen had. Although I'm certain that KP would have shown them the error of their way in much more civilized method. Probably wouldn't have had the same effect as this though. She'd probably still be in that funk if the cops hadn't started making noises that maybe it was my fault that this had happened. I think the words, "so why did you call in your thug to brutalize these two innocent and upstanding citizens" didn't even have enough time to fully be spoken before I had a number of voices raised in anger at that accusation. A good number of people had apparently taken Jason's accusations to heart, not just Kim.

"It's no big KP," I try to calm her down. "The cameras will show that I had nothing to do with it, besides driving his head into the wall and all."

"It's so ferociously unfair," she muttered, still not properly appeased. We were half way home by then, passing by a park. The light was getting dim by then, and a cool rustled the trees around us. I led the way, turning into the wooded alcove. I doubt Kim realized the detour, but I figured we had to be out of prying eyes for what no doubt would come next.

"Well, if they try anything, my lawyers will eat them alive and spit out their bones," I assure her. She winced a bit at the somewhat bloodthirsty turn of phrase before rolling her eyes.

"Lawyers," she drawled. "What lawyers?"

"The ones I can hire with my vast fortune amassed," I inform her easily. This made her laugh.

"And how did you get that vast fortune, you goof?" she giggled and nudged me with her hips in a playful fashion.

"Naco royalties," I tell her with a grin.

"The ones you lost?" she reminded me with a pointed look. It looks like the banter was really taking the edge off her melancholy.

"Just the first check. I still get a nickel for every naco sold," I remind her, and caused her to gape. I grinned at her flabergastedness. "I think royalty contracts last for like twenty years or something. My lawyers explained it all, but I wasn't really paying attention. He had this really cool looking snow globe and I kinda spent the entire time shaking it around." Then I sighed and my shoulders drooped. "Till I dropped it and it exploded." A chattering emitted from my pants, and Rufus scrambled up onto my shoulder and patted my head. We both spent a moment in solemn mourning over that snow globe. It really was awesome.

"And if that ain't enough, I'll finish the job," the voice that came from directly behind us made Kim jump up and squeal like a little girl. It was so adorable that I couldn't help but laugh at it. I just turned around. Sure enough, directly behind us, appearing out of nowhere was Jason. Rufus jumped to attention. He had managed to sleep through all the action earlier without a problem. He had really been sore that he missed out on the excitement. Now faced with the titan before him, his eyes widened and he quickly turned around and scampered right back into his pocket, before pulling the pocket lid shut down on his head and chattering loudly while shaking. Really now, I mean, was Jason really that scary?

Well, honestly, if I didn't already know him, I'd probably do the same thing.

"Dude, you're like something straight out of one of those camp-type horror flicks. How the hell does something so big move so quietly?"

"Practice." Now that he'd been noticed, he apparently didn't feel like moving in movie monster mode. I kept on walking, and Jason got into step with me. Well, we both traveled in the same direction and at the same speed. Considering his size that meant he was taking like one step for every two of mine. Kim gaped for a second, and then she sped up to catch up. She looked like she was torn between going all kick-ass mission-mode on the big guy and not provoking the enormous unstoppable juggernaut of destruction that currently didn't seem aggressive. Eventually she decided to follow my lead.

Mostly. "Ron," she hissed, as though Jason couldn't hear us while he was less than two feet away. "What are we doing walking next to this guy? He just sent two people to the hospital, and the cops are looking for him!"

"Talking," Jason rumbled back.

"Huh?" she said, looking at him with a twitch in her eye. He really does look a lot bigger when you're standing next to him and all.

"We have to talk." Jason was apparently much more taciturn when he wasn't about to destroy something fragile. You know, fragile. Like other people.

"About what?" Kim ventured, sounding as though the very thought of being in his presence was more distasteful than giant cockroaches. And Kim hates giant cockroaches.

"Not you. I hate you." Jason fixed his gimlet gaze on me. "You."

"I know why you're here. Go on," I tell him. Kim glanced at me, preparing herself to deliver a lecture about encouraging and comingling with violent maniacs, but then my expression made her pause.

I'm not sure what she thought when she saw it. It was the same expression I wore when I was with Stephanie. I just hope she doesn't jump to the wrong conclusions and think I had sex with Jason too.

I mean, not that there's anything wrong with that, if that's what the two people doing it are into. I just have zero interest in, how to put it, exploring my boundaries like that. Actually, my interest in that might just be borderline negative interest.

Especially considering the sheer size difference….

Okay, seriously, enough of this train of thought.

Jason is blunt. It's in his nature to be that way. So he says it straight up. "Come back with me. Come back to us."

I can see Kim's surprise at the offer. The same one that Stephanie had given me. Before she has a chance to properly consider that, Jason continued. "It felt good in there today, didn't it? Striking out, seeing others strike out for you. It felt strong, and powerful, and righteous. Me putting those punks in their place: at your feet. You liked seeing that."

Kim looks disgusted at that, not even able to consider for a second that anyone she knew would be so sadistic as to take pleasure in that kind of brutality. Before she can cut in, I speak.

"Yeah. I did." I can see my admittance shocks her, and she stares at me wide eyed.

"Just like it felt good, stopping me from going over the edge." Jason's chuckle once more brings to mind the moving of rocks. "Stepping in front of your allies, defending them, striking down what was gonna strike them down."

"Yeah. That did too," I admit as well. Kim seems frozen in indecision. This wasn't what she saw happening when she woke up today. She thought she'd spend some time with her BFs, both of them: boy friend and best friend. She thought she'd do a little cheering, hang out with a few friends, and maybe get some school work done. Not that she'd be facing yet another shadow from my past, trying to take me away after displaying some piece of me that she never even suspected was there.

And what a piece it was, my violence. I knew it was there, always. I've even exhibited it a few times, when the situation was right. But my agreeing with what happened today, my admittance of enjoyment at the sight?

Kim just looked lost, staring at me like she'd never seen me before.

"Come with me. We can go back to the others, and we can be like the old times, back before. We can go out and find others like those two, and smash them like the bugs they are. You already do it," Jason was gathering momentum now. "You already go out and smite freaks and monsters. Let's do it together. You can find them, you already do. Only instead of that prissy little red head it'll be you and me and the others. You know I don't care who we fight, just so long as there's blood on the floor afterwards." Jason's grin was feral, and it warped his already knotted and tight face into something even more gruesome. But besides the gruesome, there was something else: a savoring, a remembrance. Just like Stephanie never forgot her lovers, Jason never forgot his foes. Though it has been years since I'd last seen him I'd no doubt there were many, many foes between now and then. Just like Stephanie had had many, many lovers. Just like Stephanie didn't care who her lovers were, I Jason really didn't care who his enemies were. Just so long as there was conflict, battle, a fight that made his blood sing halleluiahs to the heavens, he'd be there.

And with that realization, my blood sang too. Because no matter how much I'd rationalized, or ignored, or forgave, those two whiny little insignificant D-hall punks had pissed me off for a very long time. Their inconsequential swaggers, their mute posturing, their whiny demands, everything! Who the hell did they think they were? They knew I saved the world, and battled freaks so dangerous that no one else but me and KP could stop them, and what do those pathetic little miscreants do when I get back bruised, bleeding, and exhausted? They took advantage of me!

"Those two got what was coming to them," I said. And my own face twisted in distaste as well. Kim's face flinched. And for a second I thought about it. Leaving Middleton behind, hunting down the ones I already hunt down. But this time it'd be different. There'd be no disrespect, no forgetfulness, no humiliation. And we'd make sure that the ones we put down wouldn't get back up. They'd never hurt, or steal, or scare anyone again.

And Kim can see that on my face. She could always read me, just as well as I can read her. And maybe it's because of that desire to hurt, that she looks scared again, just like when Stephanie had propositioned me. I draw a deep breath, and almost shift to take a step, to join walk away from Kim, and beside Jason instead. But then I release a shuddering breath. No. I look up at the towering juggernaut beside me and give him my response. "But no one else in the hallway deserved what almost came to them too." I stop and look Jason dead on. "You've already got plenty of targets. You don't need me to give you more."

Jason didn't flinch. He stopped and met my gaze, looking for something. Weakness I think. Or maybe doubt or hesitation. He'd see it if it was there. He was a combatant, and nine tenths of all combat was figuring out just what the other person was going to do and either doing it better or doing something else first. Finally, he sighed, and his body slumped. He looked tired, maybe even defeated.

It only lasted for a second. Jason was the kind who took defeat easy, and he always recovered.

"Stephanie told me you were stubborn." That was the closest to ever admitting a loss Jason had probably ever come. "You know the others are going to come soon."

It wasn't a question, but I responded anyway. "Yeah. Three left."

"You know those three are going to be a hell of a lot more persuasive than me and Steph." Again, it wasn't a question.

I shudder. Oh gods, do I know it. "Yeah."

With one last nod, Jason gave one last glare at Kim, who had remained silent through the last part of our dialogue. Her face had changed again. Before, she'd been riding the emotional rollercoaster, now she looked closed off. Composed. Like some epiphany had finally made itself known, and she was trying to deal with the sudden insight by not revealing any of it. It was a very good poker face. She should take it to Vegas sometimes. Jason addressed her. "I still hate you."

Then he turned and walked away.

I sighed, closed my eyes, and tried not to think about how my legs were shaking, or how cold the night had become.

Kim said nothing.

***

It was later that night, and I was sitting in front of my TV, not even pretending to know what was going on on whatever station I was watching, when the phone call came for me.

"Hey, Mrs. Dr. P," I murmured, giving her half a mind, the other half lost in dark thoughts and vague fears.

"Ronald," she said, and sounded worried. This brought a whole lot more of my mind into focus on her. I like Mrs. Dr. P. I like all the Possibles. If something was up with them, with any of them, than the gods better clear back because I might just get pissed. "I'm sorry to bother you so late at night…"

I cut her off. "It's never too late at night for the Possible clan!" I declare firmly. "What's the matter? KP try to cook and you need me to straighten things out for you all?" My joke was delivered with a grin that could be heard over the other side of the speaker.

"No, we've managed to keep her out again," Mrs. Dr. P admitted, and I could hear her smile on the other end. It made me feel like the entire day wasn't a failure. "It's just," she trailed off, trying to find a way to explain what was bothering her. "It's just that, well, Kim has been a little off tonight." Wow, that doesn't surprise me in the least. "I know a few things happened at school today, and they really seem to have shaken her up. I don't suppose," and here she hesitated. It was late at night, and I had been a center part of what had probably shaken Kim's world, but then Mrs. Dr. P continued. "I don't suppose you can come by and talk to her?"

I don't hesitate. "No problem, Mrs. Dr. P. I can be over in a few. You can give me the sitch then."

A quick good bye, a few minutes to change, and a brief walk in the night, and I'm cruising through the Casa De Possible like I was born and bred there. Mrs. Dr. P is waiting for me at the door, and she gives me a welcoming hug when I show up in all my goofy glory.

"Evening to you too, Mrs. Dr. P! So what seems to be the problem with our Kimila?" I start heading up towards Kim's room even as I check the circumstances that await me.

"Well, I'm not sure," Kim's mother hedged. "Just very listless. And for some reason she's been looking through all our photo albums most of the night." Huh. Well, that's weird. But is it really weird enough to justify a late night visit by the Ronster in her eyes?

I like Kim's mother. I really do. I like her entire family honestly. They're just so much more, familiar I guess would be the word. Gods know my parents aren't exactly stellar examples of what to do with a child. Their definition of counseling was ignoring it till the situation resolved itself. And don't even get me started about their skills at breaking the news. When they first moved me to the attic, I arrived home to find my old room completely converted in to a den. The two of them were actually gone, and had left a note by the phone saying they'd be gone for two days for a conference. I had no idea where any of my stuff was, or where I was supposed to sleep. I was actually scared that they had decided to get rid of me, probably because I wasn't the perfect son. I had ended up calling up the Possibles, and sharing my fear with Mrs. Dr. P in the kind of hushed and scared voice that only a preteen who has no idea whether his parents loved him or not could manage. She'd instantly invited me over to stay with her and Kim, even going out with me the next day to get me a few outfits. I was serious when I said that everything in my room was moved. I would have probably been forced to wear the same clothes for three days if she hadn't done that for me. And when my parents get back, the only explanation they had given me for the strife was, "This is our way of telling you". And then they had laughed at me when I had mentioned that I had been scared shitless for three days.

Yeah, my parents: not stellar.

"And so you need a touch of the Ronman to fix the situation up?" I pose heroically. "Say no more!"

Kim's mom laughed with me. "Thank you Ron," she said to me with a maternal smile. "I know I can always count on you."

I turned away and rubbed my hand against my neck even as I walked ahead to Kim's room to hide my blush at her statement. Making Mrs. Dr. P proud just might be the best thing I did today.

I stop outside Kim's door, and give it a knock. Always knock on Kim's door, by the way. The one time I didn't and just went on in, well, I have really bad timing apparently. I mean, yeah, we've had to dress in front of each other before, but that's always with a screen between us, or my eyes covered. That's a little different from coming across your oldest friend who happens to be a girl changing her underwear. Yeah, that was awkward in the extreme. "Hola Kim! Got a second to chill with your best friend?"

"Come on in," she answered, sounding muffled by the door, and distant in her thoughts. I don't wait for a second invitation, and let myself in. Kim is sitting cross legged on her bed, and sure enough, just like her mom had said, she was flipping through a photo album splayed across her lap. I cross the room, and flop down next to her on my belly, propping my head up on an arm so I can look past her side and see which pictures she's looking at. She rolls her eyes at my irreverence, but angles the book so I can see more easily. Neither one of us makes a big deal about me being on her bed, or being so close. The familiarity in our friendship had broken down barriers that most people would have in these kinds of social situations. "Make yourself at home," she tells me dryly.

"Don't mind if I do!" I grin up at her, before one of the photos catch my eye. "Hey, I remember that! Halloween, seven years ago!" Ah, good times. Kim had decided, in her tomboy way, that no way was she gonna be a princess! Instead, she had chosen, of all things, Godzilla as her costume. And ever since, the title Kimzilla had come to haunt her at every turn. I was dressed as a chef, though I had decided that all good chefs were Italian, and that all Italians had giant mustaches. And then I had decided that spirit gum just wasn't enough to keep that face mop on, so when my parents hadn't been looking, I had replaced it with super glue. All right, maybe those weren't the best of times. I had nearly lost my lip trying to get the fake facial hair off.

Kim gave me a half grin, and then turned back to the album, lost in her thoughts. I let her stay there for a while, enjoying the comfortable silence between the two of us as I let her fingers turn the pages and guide us back through the nostalgic years.

Mrs. Dr. P was right. Something is eating Kim. I can read her well enough to know that if I just hold tight, I'll find out what soon enough.

"Ron," she finally said.

"Yeah? What's up KP?" here it is. She'd had to build herself up to this, so it's probably pretty big to her. I roll over onto my back, cross my arms behind my head and meet her eyes, encouraging her to go on.

"Stephanie and that other one today, Jason," she begins, and seems to be picking her words pretty carefully. "They both asked you to go back with them."

Ah. So that's what was on her mind. Clever girl, KP, you picked right up on that. I nod, and with a serious face replied. "Yeah, they did, didn't they."

"And they both said that the others would be coming," she continued, pausing afterwards.

Okay, she's obviously trying to work this through in her head, and now I'm just a sounding board for the moment. "Yes, they did."

"And Jason said that the others would be more persuasive then him and Stephanie." This time I just nod, and Kim continues, finally shutting the album completely, and giving me her whole attention. "This is bigger than just a few friends trying to catch up, isn't it?"

"Yeah." I sighed. "Yeah, it kinda is, KP."

"What is it? I mean were you in trouble, or do you think your old friends are going to try and start something, if you don't go back with them?" she asked. Her voice had started out slow, calm, and collected, and had ended fast, worried, and tweaked.

"Go or stay, there's gonna be trouble, KP," I tell her, and I mean it. "What kind of trouble depends on which way I go." Her eyes widened at that. I'd noticed that about her lately. So many of her reactions were so much more exaggerated than what I was used to. This was Kim Possible! She had faced down dangers that most people only dreamed of after bad B movie marathons! Just why was it that this sitch seemed to get her on edge so much lately?

"And do you think you will?" she asked, her voice low.

"Will what?" That question had honestly confused me. Just what was this about? Why was she so tweaked by this?

"Go with them," she answered, whispering.

I started. I looked at Kim, really looked at her. Her eyes were misted, and her lips were trembling. My gods. She's scared: scared of me leaving her. There was a moment when this revelation hit me that my entire universe was vertigo. I knew that fear. It was the same fear that hit me every time she found her zone in the hottie haze. It was the bleak and certain knowledge that came with facing the realization that someday, somehow, someone was going to come between us. I don't think she'd ever felt it before, not like me. I had to watch her again and again with glazed cow eyes staring at whatever flavor of the month it was that had caught her eye, wondering if this was the one that was going to replace me as her companion. But she'd never had the buffers I'd had. She'd never seen me tempted, never seen me with another option before. I'd made sure of that, keeping my liaisons away from all prying eyes, even hers. The experience was new to her, and it had shaken her more deeply than anything that either of my two visitors had said to her.

I sighed, and lowered my eyes, not able to meet her gaze as I pondered this revelation. Finally, I ask her, "And if I did?" She drew into herself when I said that. It sounded like an admission of intent, but I pressed on. I had a point to make to her, one that was a long time coming. "Would it be any different?" This seemed to confuse her, so I elaborated. "Different from you when you were with Josh? Or when you're with Eric?" She shook at that, almost imperceptibly. "KP, we've been friends for so long, but it hasn't been forever." Reaching, out, still laying on the bed, I grasp her hand and take it with both of mine. Her dewing eyes met mine, and her lips shook with repressed sobs. "And we'll be friends for a long time more if I have anything to say with it." I stare her dead in the eyes, trying to impart just how I felt, just how much I cared for her, just how much she meant to me. "But there's no way of knowing if that long time will be forever either. I don't know the future. I don't know what will happen. I do know what I want, though." I smile at her, beaming with all the certainty in me. She was frozen by that, her emotional rollercoaster bottoming out from all the tops and turns it'd been on. "I know I want to be with you for as long as I can before anything can drag me away from you."

She sniffled. Finally turning away from me, almost violently, one arm crept up and surreptitiously rubbed a sleeve against her face. Ah, KP, always being strong. I didn't call her on it. She'd had enough shocks for one day. No need to try and force the issue. I just held her hand with both of mine, rubbing my thumbs across the back of her knuckles. For minutes we stayed like that: me giving her comfort, and her trying to hide just how much she needed that comfort. My KP, always strong before others, and even when she was feeling her moments of weakness, knowing I'd be there to see her through them. Finally, she turned back to me. We both pretended that the last few minutes had never happened. She gave me a watery grin, and I answered back with a heartfelt one.

There was one more thing on her mind though. "Ron. About what that guy today, Jason, said." She sounded hesitant. Now this was a conversation I was expecting. "What he said in the D-hall…" she trailed off, and I waited, letting her get her thoughts together before expressing them. "Have I been a bad friend?" she finally asked, plaintively. She wanted, no needed to know that she hadn't done me wrong for all this time. I know my fearsome Kimzilla. She desperately needed assurance that she hadn't been so caught up in saving the world that she had left saving her best friend on the way side.

And since I'd been expecting this particular train of thought, I was ready with my response.

I got up and walked away. As I left the room, I heard her gasp again, a desperate, sorrowful, catching thing. It was awful to hear.

I was down to the living room, and Kim's mother was waiting for me.

"Ron, did you manage…" was as far she got, almost wringing her hands together in worry. Why that sneaky lady! If I didn't know any better, I'd say she'd been listening in on the whole conversation! Before she got any further though, I raised my hand and stopped her. Turning back to the stair way I'd just walked down, which no doubt held a Kim that was about to go down on herself hard for all her failures, I pause, plant my feet, and take a deep breath.

"KP! SIDEKICK IN TROUBLE!" I bellow at the top of my lungs, nearly scaring poor Mrs. Dr. P out of her wits. Then I started counting down internally.

Somewhere between two second and three since I shouted Kim was down in the living room in full mission protect-my-best-friend-from-anything-and-god-have-mercy-on-the-aggressors-soul-because-I-sure-won't mode. Posture erect, arms in defensive positions, stance set, and with a look of fury that wouldn't have been out of place on an avenging angel Kim swooped down so damn fast I can barely follow her movements, ready to kick ass and take names to keep her goofy and clumsy partner out of harm's way. Of course what greeted herself was a grinning aforementioned sidekick and a surprised mother.

"Where's the bad guy?" Kim demanded, no doubt expecting something nefarious hidden behind the couch or in the corner by the TV, her eyes swinging to and fro trying to find the threat that had caused me to call out.

"No bad guys here, KP," I grin at her. "Just trying to prove a point!" Walking up I put my arm around her, throwing her off balance at the sudden extra weight on her.

"Ron," she dragged out, no doubt feeling the adrenaline coursing through her and having trouble shifting out of mission mode. I continue on, mostly to keep her out of thrash-her-best-friend-for-alarming-her mode.

"KP, no matter how bad things have gotten in the past, you've always been there to bail me out," I tell her. "That right there, that was me proving that to you. Mostly in a way that won't let you doubt it a second afterwards!" I turn her so she can meet my eyes. She's still halfway between beat-up-enemies-for-hurting-her-friend mode, and yell-at-the-sidekick-that-freaked-her-out mode, and I take advantage of the confusion in switching between those modes to take her face and force her eyes to meet mine. "Do you think for a second, that after all that, after all the times you saved my kosher fakin' bacon that you haven't looked out for me? That you haven't been the bestest friend ever in the history of all bestest friends?" She looks a little a little taken aback by my vehemence. I push on. "After all the death rays, and mind controls, and weirdo fights, that I doubted for a second you'd have my back if I asked for it? Heck, after all the weird stuff, a couple of punks at school was normal!" I grinned. "It was almost relaxing! Don't doubt for a second, KP, that if I had really been worried about those two, I wouldn't have asked for help." I grasp her chin and tilt her head up, giving her a full dose of the Ronshine. "I just didn't want you to have to sweat the small stuff after having taken care of all the big stuff."

Though she looked majorly tweaked at the beginning of my little rant, by the end of it, she looked relieved. Her smile just about broke her face, going ear to ear, and she beamed up at me. Right there, she stopped holding herself back and wrapped her arms around me in a rib creaking hug. I let out a whoosh of air as she squeezed me, but then put my arms around her just the same.

"You goof," she muttered, her head buried in my shoulder. "Don't' scare me like that again!"

"Only way to get through the Possible fortress of self-righteousness," I assure her. "If the only way to get through was the big guns, the big guns it is!" She snorted at that, and rubbed her face against me, trying to cover a sniffle or two that had escaped her in the emotional moment. I noticed Mrs. Dr. P in the background, with a hand by her mouth as she smiled her own amazing smile at the scene. If I didn't know any better, I'd say me and KP being so close made her even happier than KP just feeling better alone would have.

After what seemed like hours, but was probably only a few minutes, KP drew back, and with another covert eye wipe stood an arm's length away from me. With a little laugh, she told me, "Well, I don't care if it's normal to you! If you ever have any problems with something like that again, you let me know. I won't just stand by and let my best friend get roughed up because that's what supposed to be normal!" She gave me a little mock glare.

"But KP, that would do some serious damage to my street cred," I whined back. With a sniff and a toss of her head, she rebuked me.

"Don't care. I'm your best friend, and I know what's best for you!" she declared, her nose high in the air and with a laughing air about her as she repeated a phrase that had come to be satirical to us since the last time she said it.

Oh, is that right? Challenge met, and challenge matched. Time to do some serious teasing. "Well, you know, it wasn't like it was all bad! I mean, afterwards, they'd throw me into the girls locker room. All those half dressed cheerleaders," I ramble, and KP's eyes widened as she snapped to face me, mouth agape. With a grin I continued innocently. "And all so sympathetic for the poor abused hero!"

"You…"Kim stuttered. "You gigolo!" she snapped and started advancing on me. With a look of horror, I started to back up.

"Now wait a sec Kimila! No need to fly off the handle!" Without another word I turned and bolted. Kim led afterwards in mock-furious pursuit. "No! Not the hair again!"

And as I led the laughing Kim on a furious chase around the room, I caught Mrs. Dr. P's laughing eyes with my own, and gave her a sly wink even as Kim squawked with indignant fury.

Mission accomplished. She's all fired up now!

Now I just gotta hope it holds up for what comes next. Jason wasn't lying when he said that the worst was come.


	3. Tzeentch

Ruinious

Author's notes: Disclaimers back in chapter 1, you know where to find it. For all of you who were wondering which one was next, now you know. In response to a few reviews, yes, this is running concurrent with So The Drama. Readers, enjoy.

Tzeentch

"You know what the best part of a scooter is, little buddy?" I ask Rufus. When he turns his goggle clad little head to me and chattered, I shook my head in response. "No, it's not the feel of the wind in my hair or the asphalt beneath my tires. Its days like this," I waved my arm, gesturing to the tableau in front of us, "And the fact that I NEVER have trouble finding a spot to park!" I grinned at the naked mole rat perched on my handlebar, cut in front of a minivan that I had already seen circle the mall parking lot three times trying to find an open space, and maneuvered into a thin space between two other cars. It is a beautiful late spring day, and in order to properly enjoy the fine weather, it looked like nine tenths of Middleton had decided to spend it indoors spending money. There's a word for that, a school word. Something to do with iron or metal or something. Never can remember, but it totally fits the circumstances. I allow myself to feel just a little bit of satisfaction at the expense of the minivan driver, who looked venomously at me as she was forced to circle again, with what looked like an entire soccer team of little whiny vicious brats in the back tearing up her seats.

Ha! Sucks to be her! Remember kids: don't make the same mistake your parents made: use birth control! I shook my head at that. These last couple of days has really seen a re-awakening of my mean streak it seems. But honestly, after the last few days, I feel perfectly justified in taking a little bit of joy in the suffering of others. They all seemed to take joy in my own after all.

Jason's little stunt had definitely changed my social standing at school, that's for sure. I mean, on its own it might have been written off as weirdness attached to Kim that rubbed off on me, but combined with Stephanie's spectacle, it had apparently managed to permanently rewire the opinions of most of the school about me. Before I had just been the goofy kid that hung out with a popular cheerleader and occasionally saved the world. Now, well now I'm the goofy kid that hung out with a popular cheerleader and occasionally saved the world that also hooks up with kinky looking hotties and has enormous thugs to beat up anyone who pisses him off.

I guess this one of those good news bad news situations. The bad news, I'm now no longer a fundamentally nice weirdo who you can count on to never cause a problem. People have been walking on eggshells around me, many convinced that I had finally snapped under all the pressure and that if any of them so much as looks at me wrong, I'll put them down like I put the giant who had disregarded my orders. Yeah, in the eyes of many, I was Jason's boss or leader or whatever it is you call the guy who orders the thugs in the crime movies. The good news, is that now I'm a Bad Boy. And that brings up all the things that being Bad Boy brings to the table. I'm no longer the whipping boy of any of the jocks or wannabe bullies that plague the dark underbelly of Middleton High. Most people give me a bit of space when I walk down the hallway, and guys who used to have no problem sticking my head into a toilet and flushing now give me cautious nods or try to kiss up to me in order to make up for past indiscretions. Well, the males do anyway. Now, the girls are a whole other matter. I guess it's true what they say: chicks dig Bad Boys! If I had been this popular in my freshmen year, I wouldn't have spent that one dance locked in a closet, that's for sure. I'd've been in the dance with a girl on each arm, and another waiting for me in the car apparently.

All of this would have been perfectly fine in my book, if it wasn't for one small little thing: nothing about me has changed since all my old friends started showing up! I'm still the exact same person that I was before, the only thing different is that now they're all seeing another side of me. When I try to say hi to someone, they have to decide whether they're going to say hi back, ignore me like the good old days, or run screaming down the hall! And nothing I say seems to change that! I've tried just being my normal self, but it's just not normal anymore! No matter how hard I try to keep things the way they were, things have begun to change. And I hate change.

No, I guess that's not right. I don't hate change. In the end, all things considered, I can't hate change. But it can make me very, very nervous.

A sigh and run a hand through my messy helmet hair, trying to sooth it down so the only bit that sticks up is the usual cowlick, but then decide, eh, what the hell, and just let it stick up all over the place. The asphalt has been catching the heat of this warm sunny day, and I can almost feel it through the soles of my sneakers, a promise of warmth to come. Not even Kim has been unaffected by this recent craze. Though honestly I'm not sure if that's bad, all things considered.

Just like after Stephanie had shown up, this recent insight into the unknown mysterious history of her long time best friend caused by Jason had apparently caused a massive shift KP's priorities. In what is surely one of the signs of the incipient apocalypse, it seems that Ronshine has actually managed to fully chase away the fog of the hottie haze. We're back to being almost as inseparable as we were before I had foolishly introduced her to the new student that stole my parking space not so long ago. That isn't to say that there's no more doe eyed gazes at Eric on occasion, or that the two of them aren't still stepping out together. However, Ron night is now apparently once more a priority for Kim, and it's now a tossup which bike Kim is gonna be riding home on after school. More than that, sometimes, when I turn around quick enough and catch her by surprise, I'll occasionally find her making strange eyes at me!

No, not the doe eyes, or not even the more common and infinitely more dreadful puppy eyes. Actually, I can't quite tell what these eyes are. They're….unsettling. Judging. Considering. I'm not sure what they mean, but I figure if I wait long enough, eventually it'll make sense.

"Well, little buddy?" I said to Rufus, as we penetrated the doors to the mall, and let the cool of the a/c and the noise of the mingling shoppers wash over us. The naked mole rat on my shoulder makes a considering face, and that chatters at me while gesturing with his pause. I roll my eyes, "No, we just stopped at Bueno Nacho. We need to wait at least…" I pause and gave the notion serious thought, "thirty minutes before we hit the food court. Gotta give those nacos time to properly digest before soiling them with the inferior food stuffs offered here!" Rufus considered that, and then bowed to my logic. It really doesn't do to mix burgers with hotsauce. It leads to crummy-tummy syndrome. I consider, and then offered the suggestion. "How about we hit the store and see if we can find some clothes for Junior Prom? Who knows, we might actually get a chance to wear them there!" Rufus shrugged, and than spent at least forty seconds giving me his opinion about clothes. The little guy takes nakedness pretty seriously, all things considered. I narrow my eyes at him. "Hey now! No need to get personal. I mean, yeah, they're not gonna have a dinner jacket your size, but the least you could do is fine a proper bow tie! It's required formal wear!" He narrowed his eyes right back, chattered, poked me in the nose, and then ran down the inside of my shirt, digging his little claws into all the spots he knows I'm ticklish in before settling himself in one of my pants cargo pockets. I pretend not to notice him loosen up my belt as he goes. That's always been his favorite game after all, since it took me so long to notice just why my pants always took nose dives, I let the little guy play it despite knowing just what he's doing. After all, it's just his way of doing me a favor in his own little way.

Like I said, the guy really does take his naked serious!

"Fine," I tell him, pretending to be exasperated even while I'm grinning and not fooling anyone. "After that we can catch 'Brickening 8: This Time its Cinderous'." Properly mollified, the little guy reached out, buttoned the pocket behind him, and settled in for a serious chunk of those sixteen hours a day he needs to sleep. With a shake of my head, I turn and start making my way towards whichever of the innumerous clothing stores that had decided to try and cash in on the high school need to dress up for events that was closest.

Three steps later, something sweeps my foot out from beneath me. Startled, I desperately hopped to regain my balance, pin wheeling my arms as I did so. Unfortunately, two hops into my impromptu dance, my pants decide the up and down motion is too much for them to bear, and they plummet to my ankles. This is the last straw, and down I went, sprawling all over the floor with my boxer clad butt up in the air.

"Aww man," I moaned, "this tanks!" A few of the passerbys stop to gawk at this sudden comic display, but the rest are either too used to seeing me in a sitch like this, and the rest are just too busy to let anything tear them away from their desperate bargain hunting. I scurry up awkwardly, trying to stand and pull my pants up at the same time, and discovered that the two actions really should be done independently, and fall over again, this time onto my back. With a groan, I ready myself for a second try, this time by standing then pulling, when a feminine chuckle makes it too my ear.

I freeze, and glance over to where the sound had come from. There was a girl sitting there, about my age. She had long black straight hair, and an oriental or Middle Eastern look to her. She was dressed in a simply cut white cotton blouse, with gold embroidery tracing the hems and her collar. Below that, she was wearing a long gypsy skirt, all bright colors and garish designs. On her feet she had simple black slipper type shoes on, the kind that have a really fancy name that I never could remember. She had adorned herself on her arms and neck and ankles with all manners of bracelets and necklaces, and as she shifted in her seat, raising one hand to cover her smile, the jewelry tinkled against each other in a musical fashion. She had a small marking in the shape of a diamond on her forehead, with a crescent line beneath it. Both of her eyes were closed, and in the hand not covering her small smile, she held a collapsible cane, the very one that was used to trip me up in the first place.

"You tripped me!" I accused her, and this time managed to right myself and make myself descent, one hand tightening my belt the other hand pointing at her to give emphasis to my accusation.

"Yes," she admits, her voice lilting with her smile. "But it was only to get your attention. After all, if you hadn't noticed me and walked right by, I might never find you in all these people." She cocked her head to the side and lifted her cane while continuing. "After all, as poor blind girl alone amongst all these people, why whatever would I do? I'd be helpless!"

I snort at that. "Helpless. Right." I scrubbed my hand over my hair with a sigh, and then offered her my hand. Despite being blind, she reached out and took my hand with hers. As she stood I put my other hand on her shoulder, keeping her at arms distance, and looked her up and down. "You look good, Vanessa," I offer her by way of greeting. She favored me with a gentle smile, and then we both stepped in and embraced each other as long lost friends. She gently brushed her hands up and down my flanks, her fingers pressing lightly and giving her the shape of my body. When they reached my shoulders they trailed up wards feather light and traced the features on my face. I closed my eyes and let her finger tips trace lightly across my eye lids.

"As do you, Ron," she returns to me. With a slight smile she reaches out and grasps my elbow, collapsing her cane and somehow hiding it somewhere on her body. One second it was there, the next both of her hands were empty, and resting on my elbow. "Would you be so gallant as to escort an innocent lost lamb through this scary den of wolves?" she teased me. With a snort I offered her my elbow, and she locked one arm around it, and let the other rest gently next to it.

"Not going to jump right into the sales pitch?" I ask her. I'd been expecting Vanessa to show up eventually. I knew she'd either be next, or second to last amongst my old friends to visit, and so I'd been preparing myself for the visit. If one could ever prepare oneself for someone like Vanessa. I think it was last semester, after I'd managed to convince Barkin that "Low the Plow Shall Till the Soil of Redemption" was the worst thing written in like ever that he had to find something else for us to read. He'd settled on James Clavell's "The Shogun" for some reason. I was actually able to read that one too, seeing as I'm tight with a couple of people over there in the land of the rising sun and all. There was one part that really stuck out to me. It was the saying "the Japanese all have six faces and three hearts". It meant that back in the days of the shogunate, when there was all that political intrigue and delicate maneuvering over who would be the power behind the ruler, that all the people involved had six different goals, and three different intentions behind each goal, and that you could never trust any of them at face value.

If that was the case, then Vanessa has eighteen faces and nine hearts. I can only hope that I'd managed to get myself psyched up enough to figure out whatever plot or scheme she was cooking up.

Don't get me wrong, I like Vanessa. Even with her propensity for manipulation. It's just that, well, the girl lives for her head games!

"Goodness no! The only thing I'm interested in right now is spending time with an old friend," she proclaimed, sounding so innocent butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. She angled her closed eyes to me and managed to flutter her eyelids at me, without ever opening them. It was a pretty impressive maneuver all things considered.

"Of course," I tell her dryly. "Well then, my good old friend, whom I haven't seen in years, where should I escort you too on this fine spring day?"

"Why, dear Ronnie, I would most certainly like to see a movie," she told me. I raised an eyebrow at that, and gave her a skeptical look which she returned with a winning smile.

Rather than question just why she'd want to see a movie, I simply agreed. "Well, there was this one I've been meaning to see. Tell me, Vanessa, how much do you like "The Brickening" franchise?"

"Why, I absolutely adore it!" She tells me. "'Bricks of Fury, the Final Brickening' was one of my favorites. It totally renewed the series after 'Bricks of Fury, the Musical' gave it a hit to its credibility. Why they ever thought that final scene at the end, where the big pile of bricks hit the brick building and cuase it to collapse on the brick factory, required a dance number I don't think anyone will ever know."

"I know! Though, that one part where the fat lady is singing that solo, and then a brick hit her was pretty cool."

I figured out why we were going to the movies while I was paying for the tickets. Naturally, it was me who was paying for them of course. I have no idea how, or why, or even where Vanessa learned the puppy dog pout, but damn, she was good at it. While I was exchanging the claude for the tickets, she leaned in ever so innocently with her arm still wrapped around mine, and asked, "Excuse me, but I have to ask. Is it all right if my boyfriend speaks during the movie?" Wait a minute, boyfriend? Alright, now I know she's planning something. I play it cool so I can see where she's going with this.

It was such a strange request to make, that the ticket vendor just raised an eyebrow and looked at her like she was an idiot. "I'm sorry, ma'am, but the theater has a no talking policy. I'm afraid your boyfriend will just have to save anything he has to say till the end." The vendor looked bored by the whole exchange, and obviously wanted to help the next person so he could take the two hour break he seems to get while waiting between movies for the next showing.

Vanessa instantly looked so abashed, that I knew something was up. "I, I'm sorry. It's just, well, since I can't actually see the movie, I like it when he tells me what's going on on the screen…"she stammered, seemingly nervous.

"Can't see what's on the screen," he snorted, "what are you, blind?"

Bingo, just what Vanessa was waiting for. She gasped, and raised a hand to cover her mouth, looking mortified. A hand, which was now conveniently clutching her collapsible cane. Her eyelids began to water, and she started to sniffle. The crowd behind us began to pick up on the drama that was unfolding before their very eyes. With a plaintive sniffle, Vanessa turned and buried her face in my shoulder. The poor vendor, only just realizing that yes, the girl in front of her was indeed blind suddenly looked like he felt like biggest heel in the world.

Inside, I was beginning to laugh, but on the outside I put on a furious expression, and put my arm around the now weeping girl at my side. "Thanks a lot, jerkwad," I growled at him, and then started comforting the girl at my side. "Listen, sweetie, it's alright," I murmured, along with other platitudes, while glaring at the now stammering vendor in front of us.

"I, I'm sorry! I mean, I didn't realize…" he stammered, trying to apologize to the both of us. "I mean, I never thought a blind, I mean, visually challenged person would come to a movie! I mean, what are they going to do?"

Oh that poor, poor sap. Vanessa jumped on the opening like a cobra snapping up a mouse. She turned up the waterworks, and then wailed, "I just wanted to spend time with my boyfriend like a normal girl! I just wanted what everyone else has! Is that too much to ask?" She buried her face in my arm again, and this time I could tell her shakes were as much from repressed laughter as faked tears. I could literally feel her grin against my arm.

The people behind us had managed to pick up enough of this little performance, and were all starting to mumble uncomplimentary things at the now horrified employee, who looked like he had no idea how things had gotten so out of control. Whispers of, "how horrible," and "what a jerk!" could be heard from the people around us, and the two of us were getting nothing but sympathetic looks. I finished the performance by drawing myself up and demanding, "I want to talk to your supervisor!"

***

Two hours later, me and Vanessa were sitting in the food court, happily munching on processed hamburgers and salty french-fries. The manager had publicly scolded the poor vendor we had victimized, given us a refund, free popcorn and soda, and gift certificates for two more free shows before we had been properly mollified.

It had been totally worth it too. The franchise really was picking back up after some earlier stumbles. 'This time it's Cinderous' must have had like eighty percent more bricks than 'Advent of the Pueblo'!

Rufus was happily jumping between the two of us as me and Vanessa ate. The little guy had been grumpy when I woke him up, but when he found out that we were catching the movie earlier than anticipated, well, he forgave me pretty quick. He had spent the entire movie jumping from knee to knee, and running up and down Vanessa shirt, chattering at her the entire time. He had even helped me explain what was going on on screen for her, jumping into to chatter an explanation whenever I got so caught up in the story telling that all I was doing was saying, "whoosh!" and "whack!" in excitement. Now Rufus was just riding the end of his post adrenaline buzz and would no doubt be retiring to pocket soon enough to get some well deserved Z's.

Sure enough, between dunking one of my french-fries in her barbeque sauce and stealing one of her french-fries for my ketchup the little guy finally tuckered himself out. Vanessa smiled as little naked mole rat snores reached her ears, before I tucked my friend away into his pocket for him to sleep.

"Well, that was fun," she said, starting up a conversation that we had put on hold while Rufus was awake.

"Heh, it kind of was," I agree sheepishly, rubbing the back of my head. From beneath the fringe of my bangs, I study the girl in front of me. While the two of us had been playing that rude fool at the ticket counter, milking him for all we could get and leaving him behind broken and jobless, her face had been animated and expressive. When she wept, her tears had seemed real, when she had expressed joy at being able to have her 'boyfriend' tell her what was on screen, she had beamed. But here and now, and before when she had tripped me and greeted me as a long lost brother, her expression was calm and a small smile permanently graced her features. It was the kind of look that you'd see on a cat who got the canary and the cream, and then blamed both the crimes on the gold fish.

"I don't get to do this too often with the others," she comments, taking a french-fry and unerringly dipping it in my small pile of ketchup, despite having no sight with which to aim her fast food theft. Despite being blind, this girl was and is a prime example of how well a person can adapt to the road bumps life tosses into the paths of those who live. And I've no doubt that now, far more than even in the past, this girl in front of me has adapted to a point most wouldn't believe possible. She continued. "Stephanie, well the only time she's willing to play my games is when it lets her play one of her own," I snort at that, imagining well the games Stephanie plays, "and Jason, well, his games and mine are too different for the two of us too really enjoy something like this. As for…"

Here I cut her off. "Don't, Vanessa. Don't say their names. Not yet." I place both my hands on the table, and give her a cool glance.

She snorts, a surprisingly unfeminine sound. "Still with that old grudge, Ron? It's been four years, nearly half a decade. I know how things ended between you and all of us, but that's no reason to…"

Again, I cut her off. "You know as well as I why I don't say their names, and you know damn well that it's not because of old grudges." For the first time since she tripped me, her expression changed into something different from a mask or her smug smile. She looked almost chagrinned for a moment. I continued. "And don't give me that fake little pout. You know me better than that. I might not be at your level, but I know the rules better than most. When it's time, I'll meet them again. And when it's time, I'll say their names again. But I won't speak them one moment before hand, no matter what angle you take at it." My gaze is positively arctic now. In response to the look she can't see, she simply gives a rueful chuckle. Leaning forward, disregarding the fast food in front of her or what it might do to her expensive yet simple looking clothing, she takes one of my hands in both of hers.

"I've missed you, Ron. You were always the best at seeing through me. Yes, even better than," and here her smile turns apologetic, "him."

"Heh," I laugh with a rueful little half smile. She knew I had caught her in her little attempt to make me slip, and instead of backing off, all she does is change her angle. "I've missed you too, Vanessa. All of you. Even him," I admit. And it's true. No matter how bad the split between us was, it didn't change the fact that we were close, so much closer than should be possible for just a few short weeks. Not to mention what we all went through, there at the end. It's hard to hold a grudge against someone who was beside you when you sold your soul after all.

I sighed, and rested my head on my fist while watching the blind girl in front of me, and pondered my last thought. Sold my soul. Is that even the right way to describe what we did back then on a warm night in June? I shake my head internally at that. No, no it wasn't. I don't honestly believe in souls, not even after everything I've been through. Even knowing what I know about what comes next, about what lays above and beneath everything that most people think is reality, I still can't bring myself to believe in some ephemeral aspect of myself that mystic deities fight over in some sort of twisted spiritual game of acquisition. If there were such things as souls, I'd think the gods of other religions would put a bit more effort into holding onto mine, all things considered.

Vanessa bowed her head, and she flushed lightly at my confession. Then she raised her head, and met my gaze with her closed eyes. "I think I'm about ready to make my pitch then. You ready to hear it?" while she asked me that, her eyelids for the first time since she found me today opened. The orbs that lay beneath were pure white. Not the milky cloudy dullness, or the strangely dilated pupils, or even the scarified eyes that you find in most of the blind. There were no pupils, no iris, and if one looked close enough, not even the delicate tracing of red that most people have right around the edges of the eyes. It was as though both her eyes had been plucked from her head and replaced with perfectly white and polished limestone globes. Though they couldn't see, I could steel feel the weight of them upon me.

I take a deep breath, and crack my neck. "Alright. Lay it on me."

Vanessa isn't like Stephanie or Jason: those two were physical beings. Their first responses were sex and violence, and they had no problem displaying those primal urges before all. It was the very intensity, the devotion with which the two of them proudly wore their dedication to their aspects of the flesh that made them so compelling to be near, so irresistible to watch. Vanessa was a different beast entirely.

"You don't belong here," she tells me flat out. "You don't belong in this town, in this school, or with these people who claim to be your friends."

Behind me, someone drops a tray, and it clatters across the ground. The noise is distant to me, my whole world having shrunk down to the white eyes in front of me. "If you're trying to appeal to teenage angst and the common fears of inadequacy that surround the adolescent attempt to fit in, then your argument..." I begin, but she cuts me off.

"How did you know, not to let me mention their names just now?" she asked me directly. "More than that, how did you know what I was planning to do at the theater earlier? Most people," she waved her hand slightly, indicating the crowding masses around me, "would have been shocked by what we did. We manipulated that man. We ruined his reputation, lost him his job, and effectively robbed the company of money. We scammed them, and we did it perfectly. No practice, no planning, and no slip ups, despite the fact that we hadn't met for over four years. No normal person would have been able to do that." She cocked her head in challenge, daring me to argue against her logic. And that was what she was using against me, logic. Jason and Stephanie, they had made their pleas to my body, and accepted it when I rejected them. They know that sometimes there are just ways you respond, and that sometimes instinct really is the best response, in the bedroom and the battleground especially. Vanessa though, she was a creature of convolutions, of confusion, of doubt, and she'd use those against me without a second thought if it would bring her what she wanted: me.

"We're not the first ones to run a scam, Vanessa," I countered.

"But when these others," her voice indicated condescension as she referred to the world around us, "would need planning and practice, we needed none. They'd have to carefully rehearse their lines, to build their character up like any other actor. We didn't. This is no surprise for me. It is in my nature to do so, as you no doubt know. But did it surprise you, that you would so easily be able to follow my lead? You knew, instinctively what I was planning, just like you knew instinctively that it would not be right to mention their names, no so early. Why is that?" Her counter-counter is effective.

"Because I'm different," I admit, surrendering her the point. Her eyebrow rose, and for a second she seemed surprised that I would acknowledge that so easily. Now, I just have to guess whether that response was genuine, or if it was planned. I think I can see the trap she's laying for me beneath all the feints and verbal maneuvering. Now the only question is that if I can see it, can I anticipate it and lay a trap-trap for her? And if I can, will she have a trap-trap-trap waiting? "We're all different," I elaborate. "We weren't that normal even before. And afterwards, well, we all know that it changed us." I refer to the events at Wannaweep casually, displaying none of my usual reticence for speaking of that wretched place.

"And you have no problem, even knowing the gap between you, staying here? Staying around the ignorant and the blind?" she ventures, and she's not referring to blindness like hers.

"I've managed it well enough so far," I countered. That was too easy. She wasn't backing off when she asked that question, she was setting me up somehow.

"And how much longer do you think you can manage it?" she returned. I hold back a flinch as she echoes one of my long standing doubts. "How long 'till this house of cards you've built in the sand can no longer support itself? Until the shaky grains of the foundation shift, and the whole thing comes tumbling down? And what do you think will happen afterwards? Do you think your family, your friends, your colleagues," she said the last words with just the faintest trace of disdain, "will stand by you? Will they see that which you concealed from them as you intended, you protecting them, or as merely lies?" She leans forward, still grasping my hand, and puts her face inches from mine. Gone was her hubris laden smirk, and just as gone was her thinly concealed contempt for those around her. Here instead was absolutely surety in her words. "They. Will. Turn on you. Your families will spit upon you in distaste, unable to comprehend the path you've taken. Your so called friends will reel away in disgust and fear. And that contemptible little red headed tart will renounce you, and strike out at you in hatred." Vanessa's voice twisted as she mentioned what awaits me. And while I want to stand up and voice my certainty that that will never happen, that my parents, and my other family the Possibles, and Felix, and Monique wouldn't do that to me. And I wanted to answer her obvious malice for the 'contemptible little red headed tart' Kim with anger and even greater certainty that nothing could come between us. But I can't. I know they'd stand by me, even in disappointment, if I were stealing, or doing drugs, or lying or something equally petty. But would they stand by me, if they knew the truth about Camp Wannaweep? If they really knew where my faith lay, and if it wasn't in the Christian or Judaic god? If that faith lay in older, darker, more primal and vicious things?

Well, I might be better at predicting then some, especially when I warmed myself up to it like I've been doing in preparation for this meeting, but there are some things I can't predict, or even trust myself to try and predict without letting my hopes leak in and contaminate the future I see.

I said nothing, and she let the silence between rein for a second, only broken by someone else in the room dropping a cup full of ice. Neither one of us pay it any attention, her blank gaze meeting my brown one, her confidence and passion buffeting against my doubts and my hesitation. Still inches away from my face, one of her hands left where it clutched mine, and it brushed my face slowly, echoing the caress she gave me when she traced my features no more than three hours ago. "Come with me. Right now. Leave these meaningless people behind, forsake your soon to be persecutors. Things have changed from what they once were." Her voice was a whisper, and every bit as seductive as Stephanie's was. It held promise, but not of the sexual sort. "With you with me, we can change it even further. We can heal the rift that formed when you left, and repair what was between us, repair and improve it."

Her white eyes pierced me. She was right too. If I were to go with her, I really don't think there is anything that the two of us couldn't do, no rule we couldn't circumvent, no law that would bind us. We would change things, not with the sensuality or force that Stephanie and Jason would have used. No, we would be the gentle touch behind the scenes, the flick of fingers on puppet strings. If we needed the sex and violence, Stephanie and Jason would be with us. They'd give it to us willingly, as our brother and sister. There was no reason I even had to stay away forever either. With the right care, I could prepare things here for my return. I would be welcomed back with adoration, not chased away with revulsion.

With a trembling hand, not the one still grasped in hers, I bring my hand up, and echo her touch on my face with an identical touch on hers. She drew in a breath, deep and full and excited, trembling with anticipation.

"Tell me, Vanessa," my voice was just as soft as hers. "Why don't you stay here with me instead?" Her gaze broke as she blinked in surprise, her lips parting in shock at my offer. "After all, I know you just as well as you know me. I know that your favorite number is three, because you consider it the first real prime. I know the only other numbers you like half as much are nine, because it's three, three times, and twenty-seven, because it's three, three times three times. I also know that your favorite tarot card is death, because you think that its constant misinterpretation of actual death instead of its real meaning of change is so ironically common. I know you, Vanessa" my words slow and forceful, though still soft. It was a delightful kind of intimacy between us. I continued. "I know that you always hated the feeling of being helpless, of missing something that everyone else around you has but you could never be a part of. If you stay here, I can give you something else, something just as great, something you've also felt just as much without. I could welcome you into my home, and you could woo my parents and wrap them around your fingers with your charm. I could bring you to my school, and all the friends I have there, you could have as well. You could be by my side, not just as a friend and sister, but as a lover too." She trembled at that. I could see her eye lids flicker, the lashes brushing against my hand. "With you beside me, we could prevent a rift from ever forming here. We could be happy, surrounded by warm people and close friends, and make sure that closeness never fails."

With one last longing gasp, she fell back into her seat. As she fell I grasped the hand against my face and brought it down, so this time both of our hands lay clasped between us. Somewhere nearby, the sound of someone crumpling a wrapper passed over us both, just more noise in the crowded food court of a busy mall.

Finally, she spoke. "You sneaky bastard." Her voice was a toneless drone. "You deliberately used every personal thing you know about me, and used it to manipulate my heart and me into doing what you want without a second thought."

And I had. My counterproposal had quite probably been the cruelest thing I'd ever done. It was a shameless, ruthless, mean, and altogether vicious thing to slap her in the face with. But then again, so was what she had been doing. I had just repaid her in kind. If I had done this to anyone else, it would have caused them to collapse in tears. With Vanessa, however…

"That was the hottest thing I've ever experienced," she finally confessed. "I think I just wet my panties."

I blushed at that. "Vanessa!" I blurt out, embarrassment clear in my voice. I scowled at her. "Okay, seriously. No taking cheap sex shots at the hormonal teenage boy just because you want to score a debate point!"

"Oh?" she leered at me. "Why not?"

"I knew I should of paid more attention in that speech class," I muttered. "Just cause I can't remember why doesn't mean there isn't a reason. I'm positive it's one of those logical fall, falaty, fatality…" I trail off scratching my head sheepishly as I tried to recall the precise word.

"Fallacies?" Vanessa suggested, smiling benevolently. I snapped my finger.

"That's the one!"

"Maybe, just a little," she conceded. Then she sighed. "So you will not come back with me?"

"No," I shook my head. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry."

"I know," she nodded.

"Also," I added honestly, "for what it's worth, that was the hardest thing I've ever had to do."

She gave a small chuckle. "You sweet talker you. I just want you to know, that regardless of how this turns out, I'm giving serious thought to convincing Stephanie to help me in seducing you afterwards," she added as well, and gave me one more wink as I blushed again, before she closed both of her eyes completely once more.

"Eh heh heh," I chuckled weakly, and broke out into a cold sweat just thinking about it. Oh dear gods, what have I unleashed upon my poor innocent self? Stephanie alone would probably be more than I could handle in the sack. Combine that with Vanessa? Oh dear dark gods, what have I done?

"There are two more coming, you know that, right?" she said, and stood up as she did so. I nodded, staying seated and taking a bite of cold french-fry as she prepared herself to go. "I imagine you can figure out which one will be next. He's been looking forward to seeing you again for a very long time." I gave a heartfelt smile at that. Yeah, I can guess who'll be next, and can honestly say that it might just be the happiest reunion out of all of them that I was looking forward to. "Well then, as a warning to an old friend, I shall give you a word of caution, for old times' sake." She leaned in, and made sure to have my attention. I gave it to her with surprise. A warning? "You and I? We're not the only ones around here who are using what we know of others to control them. I'll be seeing you again, Ron."

And without another word, she walked past me, her collapsible cane extended and in front of her, the light tap as it found the linoleum with each sweep blending into the background noise of the cafeteria. I turned my head to watch her leave as her words echoed through my skull. Not the only ones? Okay, from anyone else, that would just be ominous. From Vanessa it was a blaring red alarm with accompanying sirens. If she thought it was serious enough for direct mention, even after we had finished our meeting, then that meant there was something seriously wrong-sick going on. My eyes narrowed, and I was so deep in thought, that I almost missed the way Vanessa's head turned just a little as she passed a booth a few down from ours. When she did, I managed to make out a rustle of paper that accompanied her look. Even as she walked on, I paused at that. Wait a sec. There seemed to be a lot of noise coming from that booth….

No. No way.

I get up and quickly scamper over to the booth, and then gawk at what I find. It's Kim alright. A Kim who had seemed to have dropped her tray and covered herself in french-fries and sauce packets at one point. A Kim who was also covered in ice and soda from when a soft drink had been spilled all over her. A Kim who had also at some point apparently squeezed a burger still in its wrapper so hard that it had exploded all over her, leaving a ketchup covered pickle stuck to the side of her cheek. And most importantly of all, a Kim who looked absolutely mortified to have been found in that position by the person whom she was eavesdropping on.

For a long couple of seconds, the only thing I can do is stand there mouth agape at the tableau before me, even as Kim could only sit there looking as red in the face as her hair and more sheepish than a Scottish shepherd's flock.

Finally, she stole one of my signature moves, and scratched the back of her head while her eyes darted to the side and she gave a nervous chuckle. "Um. Hi Ron! What a surprise, seeing you here?"

***

I bounce the tennis ball in my hand, before tossing it away. It bounces against the side of the tree house wall, rebounds, hits the floor once and bounces back in the air to me. I snatch it out of the air, adjust my grip, and throw it again. Bounce, bounce, catch. The cycle is calming to me. If it wasn't, then I'd probably have driven myself crazy by now: I'd been repeating this maneuver for probably about two hours. I really do need the calm right now. I've got a lot to think about, and if I don't get it straightened out soon then the chances of me getting to sleep anytime soon will be slim to zippo. There are so many different trains of thought that I can hardly keep them separate. The strange behavior of Kim, my meetings both past and present with my old friends, Vanessa's warning, and most importantly of all….

"Why?! Why did Bueno Nacho do it? I mean, kid's toys? They're gonna fill the place with a bunch of screaming toddlers! How's a man supposed to enjoy a dignified nacho when there's a table filled with screaming brats?" I lament to the air. I'm so caught up in my monologue that when a voice comes from the floor next to where I'm sprawled out on the couch I had dragged up into this tree years ago, I don't even register the identity of the speaker.

"Um, Ron, can we talk about earlier?"

"I mean, what's next? Happy meals? Calorie charts?" I shudder and say the next part with dread. "No more bendy straws?" The very thought is so horrifying that I lose control of my tennis ball. It went careening through the small tree house, thumping wall and ceiling alike until finally…

"Ow! Knock it off Ron!" the voice said again, this time sounding irritated. With a start, I realize that no, I'm not alone up here anymore, and when I look at the hole in the floor leading out, I see an angry looking Kim, rubbing her head and glaring at me.

"Kimbo! When did you get here? And did you see where my tennis ball went?" I rush over to give her a hand up, all the while trying to spy where my little green ball of fuzz had rolled off to. She gave an aggrieved sigh, and accepted my hand up.

"No. After it hit me in the head, I have no idea where it went to," she muttered. I tried to peer around her, looking down the hole to the base of the tree.

"Aw man. I hope it didn't fall out. It'll take me forever to find it down there," I groaned. Kim planted her head in her hands with another sigh and just shook her head.

"Ron," she said slowly, obviously trying to muster the patience to deal with my attention span. "Can we forget about the ball for a sec? I really want to talk to you about something."

"Sure KP. Fire away. You know the Rondo is always ready to listen to what's on your mind," I declare, and flopped down into the couch. I heard the tree house creak at the shift in weight, and deliberately did not think about what that could indicate. I patted the cushion next to me, indicating where my redhead friend could sit, but instead she just leaned against the wall across from me. Oh? Wonder what this is about?

"It's about earlier," she began picking her words carefully.

"You mean when you were spying on me?" I tease her. I want to be upset about it, even if only a little, but honestly, when I caught her she was just too darn silly looking for me to harbor any kind of resentment. The way the pickle had been sliding down her face? Priceless!

"I was not spying!" she declared stubbornly, her face turning red. "I was…" she trailed off, looking to the side and desperately trying to find a way to describe what she was doing without admitting she was spying on me.

"Secret listening?" I suggest with sly grin.

"Yes!" she stamped her foot and pointed her finger at me. "Secret listening!"

"It's kind of like secret borrowing, only with listening instead of borrowing," I nod sagaciously. She started to nod, and then realized what I was saying, and then sighed in defeat. "So how long were you secret listening anyway?"

"Oh, not long," she hurriedly declared, and looked even redder when she did so. Oh Kim. You might be able to do anything, but lying? You're just not able to do it very well.

"You were following us since she tripped me, weren't you?" I said bluntly.

She groaned. "Yes," she admitted in defeat. She hung her head in shame, trying to hide her flushed face behind her hair.

"There, there, KP," I assure her, "what's a little secret listening between friends?"

"Okay, I'm so getting off track," she finally collected herself. Taking a deep breath, she set aside her embarrassment over a situation I will probably never, ever, let her forget, and started in on what she wanted to talk about. "When I was," she paused and then said with a grimace, "secret listening, that girl," she paused, and I stepped into fill in the blanks.

"Vanessa."

"Vanessa," she said with an annoyed hitch in her voice. I think someone might have taken Vanessa's 'contemptible little red headed tart' comment a little personally. "She said a lot of things that I don't really understand." Ah, I think I can see where this is going. "Some of the things she said, they sounded, well I thought they sounded just crazy," Kim admitted. "But the thing is, well some of those crazy things? You didn't seem to think she was crazy. You seemed to know exactly what she was talking about." Kim took a deep breath, and pushed on, determined to get this done all in one rush. "Ron, I've been trying not to freak out over this. I know sometimes I can get a little," and here she really had to fight to finish the sentence, "jealous. And sometimes, I can jump to conclusions. I," she took another deep breath, "I've been unfair to you, and made a lot of wrong assumptions about you that you probably wouldn't have had any problem talking about if I had just asked instead of assuming that I knew everything about you." She was shaking a little as she rushed on, her words spilling out of her mouth in a faster and faster rush. It was like a damn that had built up inside of her had broken and now she couldn't stop herself from telling me everything that had been bothering her. "And I don't want to be a prying, jealous, self absorbed bitch, but every time one of your friends show up they know something about you, and then they ask you to come with them, and they all hint at something big coming, and that something terrible is about to happen if you don't go with them, and each time you look like you closer to going with them, and I get so scared that this time you're going to, and, and," she was hyperventilating, desperately gasping for breath as she tried to say everything that she had been bottling up for so long.

I jumped up, and rushed over as she started to lose her balance, her lack of oxygen finally getting to her. I grab her shoulders with both arms and slowly lower her to the ground, while desperately ignoring the way the tree house shook and groaned at the sudden shift of weight in it. Okay, maybe staying up here isn't the best of ideas, all things considered. "Breathe, you need to take deep breaths, KP," I tell her, and I started to rub her back as she finally got her gasps to get in real air.

Finally, she got control of herself. With the two of us still kneeling, she looked up, her eyes the saddest they've ever been outside of the puppy dog pout. "Ron, what's going on? Why won't you tell me anything? Is it because you don't trust me? Is it something I did?" she asked me plaintively. It damn near broke my heart.

With a long sigh, I shifted so that I was sitting with my back against the tree house wall next to her, and leaned my head back so it rested against the wall, my gaze on the ceiling. "No, Kimberly. It wasn't anything you did," I admit. With my own bracing deep breath, I continued. "It was something I did," I admit.

The silence stretched on. Both of us were too busy collecting our thoughts to voice any of them. Finally, KP spoke. "You called me Kimberly. You only do that when it's really bad. Ron, what happened?"

"It's hard to explain," I admit. "I guess, the best way to explain it is to ask you a question." Kim turned her head and gazed at me steadily, her eyes encouraging. "KP, how do you define 'god'?"

She blinked and tilted her head to the side, obviously not seeing where this question came from. "God?" she said, honestly confused. "What's that got to do with anything?"

"More than you'd think," I admit. "Please KP, just answer the question. How do you define god?"

"Well," she struggled. "God is the all powerful creator of everything I guess. You know, omniscient and omnipotent, and all that. And he loves the world and everything in it, and wants us to be happy." She trailed off, not seeing where I was going with that.

"That's just one definition," I tell her. I shifted my shoulders, trying to get comfortable, and my gaze went far away. "And it's a pretty new one, all things considered. In the old days, the gods weren't that different from people. I mean, like Zeus, ya know? The god of thunder? He used to cheat on his wife all the time, and get mad at people who were good but just didn't pray to him enough. That kind of thing. Other gods were like that too, back in the old days. Set, ya know that Egyptian god? He killed his own brother and cut him into pieces cause he was jealous. And that one Swedish or Norse or whatever god, Loki? He used to do nothing but lie and cheat and in the end he betrayed the other gods and started the end of the world and stuff." I can see I had Kim's attention, as much as what I was talking about as that I actually knew all these obscure tidbits of obscure info.

"Well, what does that have to do with anything?" She finally asked. I could see her reminding herself to be patient, telling herself that this wasn't one of my usual ramblings, that it must be important. I can see that it's a difficult battle for her to wage. After all, I'm well aware of just how much history I have when it comes to rambling.

I take a deep breath, and take the plunge. This would most likely set into motion the very events Vanessa had warned me about, but I had to do it. I couldn't not be honest with my KP. "When we were at Wannaweep, you remember that one guy I mentioned earlier? The one I had an argument with?" I wait for Kim's answering nod, her eyes wide and locked on me as I spoke. I felt tired, and scared, and I think she could see it in my expression. "His dad. He was an archeologist. Did a lot of digging in strange places like Mesopotamia," I think that was how it was said, "and Africa. You know, the places with the oldest human records and stuff. Well, the kid, he used to look through his dad stuff. He found all this crazy stuff about one of the really old religions. One of the really weird ones. He told us about it." Kim looked confused, not seeing where this was going. I don't blame her for that. This wasn't the kind of thing Kim really had much experience with. I continued, my voice soft and distant. "We were just trying to be cool. You know, go out into the woods at night, and prove we were brave. Do one of the old rituals, scare each other a bit, just have some fun away from the counselors."

I turned and looked Kim dead in the eyes. "Kimberly. When we did the ritual, well, we found out it wasn't just superstition and myth. It was real. We called the gods, Kim. We called them, and they heard our prayers, and they answered."

Kim was shocked still for a moment, and then she started shaking her head. "No. No that's crazy. You're making this all up." Now she was starting to get angry. "It's okay if you don't want to talk about it. That's your choice. But if you're just going to lie to me about it and make up stories…"

I cut her off. "Mystic monkey power, KP."

That stops her. She knows my experience with that strange brand of weird. She had her doubts about its validity, but the way me and Monkey Fist both swear by it is enough for her to at least give it the benefit of the doubt.

"That's different," she says, her head of steam not quite cut off, but at least it's not increasing exponentially anymore. "That's just…"

I cut her off again. "Amulet of the monkey king, KP."

That stopped her again. "I thought we agreed never to speak of that again," she hissed. She really hadn't taken well to the whole almost turned into a monkey thing. That or the fact that Chippy had replaced her in her picture, perpetuating her picture day crisis for yet another year.

I continue, not acknowledging her admonishment. "The talisman of Anubis, KP."

Okay, I can tell she's beginning to have doubts in her unshakable faith in the lack of existence of supernatural powers. Especially the last one. That it was the talisman of another deific creature probably helped.

I just kept on listing in a droning voice. "The shared dream in the museum, KP. Sensei's supernatural ninja floaty skill, KP. The ancient text of the phantom monkey, KP." I paused and gave her a raised eyebrow. "Do you really want me to go on?"

She raised a finger and opened her mouth to debate the point, but then sighed and surrendered. "Okay, maybe there's something to it then." She looked at me sideways. I can see her concern already building, and the questions forming in her mind. If what I was talking about was true, then what did it mean, for me? "So what happened?"

I took a deep breath, and then paused. I shook my head once, then again hard. Releasing the breath, I sighed. "I can't talk about it yet."

"Can't?" she narrowed her eyes at me. "Or won't?" She was really getting sick of my evasiveness.

"Can't, KP," I assure her. "This isn't the jungle law of daycare we're talking about. The mystic monkey idols to give the mystic monkey power? Only worked when they were in perfect position. The amulet of the monkey king? Had to be wearing it. The talisman of Anubis? Had to perform a ritual. There are rules to these kinds of things. And if you screw them up, it can get bad." I shuddered despite myself.

Now Kim was looking concerned. Gods bless her, she put this together pretty fast too. "So earlier, when you and Vanessa were talking, she seemed pretty focused on how you wouldn't let her say that name. That was…?" she trailed off, letting me finish her thought.

"That was her trying to trip me up. If I had said it, I'd have screwed up what's going on right now." I nod and finish her thought. She gave me a hard look.

"And if you had screwed up whatever is going on?"

"Jungle law, KP," I nod my head solemnly. "Jungle law."

Kim sat in silence after that, and I didn't feel a need to disturb that contemplation. There was a few other things tumbling in my brain, and I was bracing myself for my own disturbing line of questions.

"I always thought you were Jewish," she finally said.

Despite myself, I laugh at that. "I am. It's just more of an ethnic thing for me. I carry on the traditions, and follow the rules, but that's mostly because I respect the heck out of my ancestors who really believed in it. I can still honor my folks beliefs, even if they're not mine." I give her a small smile. I'd always gone out of my way to carry on my parents cultural beliefs. And what can I say? After all the Jews had endured, I'm proud as hell to have been born one and live up to that heritage.

"And what do you believe? You said the," and she struggled with the next word, "gods, answered you. What do you mean?"

"The bad news is, I can't answer that yet," I admit to her. She sighed, no doubt fed up with my evasiveness. "The good news is, that after the next visitor, I'll be free to tell you a whole lot more," I admit. "Just about all of it actually." She looked at me hard, and I met her gaze evenly, trying my best to show her my all honest conviction of that fact.

"I can make do with that for now." She reached out and lightly touched my arm. "Ron. I know how hard this must be for you. Vanessa," and she once more bit out that name like it was something foul that had ended up in her mouth. Definitely still POed about the tart comment. "Vanessa said how we'd all turn on you and stuff. Ron," she grasped me firmly, and made sure I was facing her. "Ron, I want you to know: I will never turn on you. Never!" Her eyes were slightly misty. "You brought up the amulet of the monkey king earlier. You remember how you thought that actual monkey was me, and how hard you worked to prove that it didn't bother you, and that you'd accept me no matter what? Even with how much you can't stand monkeys?" I nod, stilling a brief shudder at the memory. Monkeys….. "Well that meant a lot to me, Ron. And don't think for a second that I wouldn't do the same for you." She leaned in, and her forehead rested against mine. The warmth of her breath on my face felt intimate and comforting, almost as intimate and comforting as her words. I let out a shuddering breath, and felt something cold inside of me, something that had been building since Vanessa first said those things to me, warm up. Her words had hurt me. They were supposed to. They were supposed to make me doubt. It was what Vanessa does. Which is why I had no problem returning the favor to her earlier.

"Thanks, Kimberly," I whisper. I shut my eyes, and then throwing caution to the wind, I hugged her. She returned it. We stayed like that for a long time.

Finally, I pulled away. While I brushed my bangs back from my eyes, which was absolutely not me rubbing my eyes because they were a little teary, I took another breath and pushed on with the other thing I was thinking about. "Kim. There's something else I need to bring up." She had been brushing her own bangs back, and she nodded wordlessly for me to continue. I took a deep breath and continued. "There was something that Vanessa said. Towards the end. 'We're not the only ones around here who are using what we know of others to control them.' Do you remember that?" Kim nodded, obviously not seeing where I was going with that. "KP, you don't know Vanessa. I do, and I was barely able to keep up with her in that conversation. She knows things. Things she really shouldn't know. She likes mind games, and manipulating, and she can always sniff out what others are trying to keep hidden." I'm rambling, trying to explain enough of where my suspicions came from that Kim would be able to understand just how serious I am about this. Her eyes were narrowed with confusion, trying to follow my train of thought, which was probably impossible considering how much trouble I was having following them, and they were my thoughts in the first place!

Alright, I'm digressing.

I continued on. "Kim, Vanessa doesn't do anything lightly. Every movement, every expression, every gesture? They're all planned. That's just the way she is. And if she gave a warning like that, it wasn't anything casual. It meant she had some serious leverage on someone, and the only reason she gave it to me in the end, well was for old time's sake." KP is obviously getting lost in the labyrinthine logic. "I've been thinking about it for the last few hours. I've only been able to figure out one way that she could mean it." I give my hair a brief rustle as I try to figure out how to broach the subject. "KP, you know I wouldn't do anything to hurt you on purpose right? And that if I were to do something to hurt you, it's either cause I'm trying to keep you from getting hurt worse, right? Or I thought I was really helping you but was just making a mistake?" Now I'm just rambling, and KP knows it. It doesn't change the fact that she can obviously see that whatever I'm about to say has the very strong potential to hurt her, and that I'm doing everything I can not to do that.

"Just say it Ron," she breaks in. She looks like she's braced herself for whatever it is that has me tweaking.

So I say it. "Kim, I think we need to have Wade take a deep look at Eric. I think he might be playing you."

Her eyes widened in shock. Alright, maybe I should have found a gentler way of saying that.


	4. Nurgle

Ruinous

Authors notes: Well, this was a longer delay than normal, but then again, it was a longer chapter than normal. To those who are reading this for the Chaos, enjoy, there's quite a bit in here for you. For those of you reading for Kim Possible, heh, enjoy. There's a good bit in here for you too. There's either one or two more chapters left, depending on how the writing goes. Readers, enjoy.

Nurgle

It was majestic. It was enormous. It was a monument to the perseverance that dwells within man, slumbering at his very heart. It was the ability of humankind to reach up and say, "Lo! Look upon my works! Tremble in despair, nature, for there is no majesty that I shall not aspire too!"

And then a phone went off.

"Just a sec," Bonnie told the rest of the cheerleaders from the base of the human pyramid they were forming. Without a second thought she stepped away from the formation, and sure as dominoes, the rest came tumbling down in a series of feminine groans, oofs, and exclamations. Bonnie didn't seem to notice, and started buffing a fingernail against her top while she chatted into the phone. "Brick? Hi," she drawled out the greeting for a good four or five seconds, her eyes lighting up, and her lips pulling back in a grin. I can't help but take a second to admire that smile. It just looks so much like an iguana or a lizard that I can't help but be impressed by the sheer malevolence it displays. It's almost inspirational.

Hey, wait a sec…She's in a cheerleader outfit. Where was she holding the phone in the first place?

I take a second to consider, than realize that it's Bonnie I'm talking about, and decide I'm probably better off not knowing. Seriously.

As the rest of the poor girls start extracting themselves they mumble muffled groans and mild curses, glaring at the self absorbed brunette that had nearly caused them serious harm. Falling even from a distance of no more than three people tall can have serious effects for the ones on top. And for the ones on bottom, being hit by people falling from three people up can have serious effects. I honestly can't understand just how Bonnie fails to realize this. Is she truly so self absorbed that she never even considered the possibility of broken limbs and concussions that await her cheer-mates when she pulls a move like this or does she secretly hold some desperate malicious urge to destroy all that is around her like me?

I mean, not that I ever pay attention to that malicious urge.

Mostly.

And when I do, that's what self destruct buttons are for.

From my place on the stands watching the whole ordeal, pep sweater on and Mad Dog mask resting besides me, I can see the rest of the cheerleaders in the squad grumbling and glaring at Bonnie as Bonnie mentions something about 'not showering' and 'glistening' which makes me very glad I have developed an automatic Bonnie filter to keep me from ever paying attention to anything she says too closely. Very handy to have around sometimes. However, before any of them can even make an effort to try and call her on it, they all see something which makes them pull back and make desperate attempts to seem like innocent pieces of the scenery.

Even sitting a dozen yards or so back from the mess, I make the same effort.

Kim does not look happy.

Well, rather Kim doesn't look happy in comparison to how she had looked for the last few days. And considering how she's looked for the last few days, I think everyone present besides the unobservant Bonnie was praying for something marginally less dangerous to intervene. Marginally less dangerous as in: a masked serial killer, an earthquake, an invading hoard of aliens, or the Armageddon. That kind of less dangerous.

It might be a bit of an understatement to acknowledge that the last few days, Kim hasn't been very freaking happy at all.

The onset of this unhappy mood can be clearly marked to when I had made my confession of suspicion about Eric to her in the tree house after I bared a significant portion of my soul to her. That had gone over surprisingly well, all things considered. Apparently the reluctance I had displayed when parting with that little insight combined with the changes in her perception of me had been enough for her to at least wait for me to finish giving her my arguments before she passed judgment on my accusation. She didn't know Vanessa well enough to take her word for gospel, desperately misleading and self serving gospel but gospel none the less, like I did, but I was able to point out a few things that could lend credence to my accusation. Like how focused he was on her, to the exclusion of all else. In the months that he's been here, not once has Eric made any attempt to befriend anyone else. I mean even me and Kim, joined at the hips as we've been since pre-K, have other friends. Kim spends time with Monique and some of her fellow cheerleaders, and me and Felix have regular zombie killing marathons. More than that, Eric's attention to Kim was perfect: never a misspoken word or awkward moment. How often does that happen? Kim might have less experience in playing the field then I do, but she has enough to know that people screw up, especially when they're desperately trying to impress a potential love interest. Tack that on to the fact that Eric had never introduced his father to her, despite the fact that Kim had already invited Eric over a couple of times to meet her folks and eat with her family, and I thought I had formed a pretty solid case.

Turns out I was wrong.

She had reacted like I was launching some kind of personal attack at her, and an argument had started to brew. Fortunately, or unfortunately as the case might be, Eric himself had taken that moment to interrupt, calling for Kim from the base of the tree. She had left to go to him, and I had stayed behind, alone except for a napping Rufus. Well, at least she had thrown the tennis ball back up before she had gone. Though I'm pretty sure the only reason she had done that was so she could beam me in the face with it.

That had been three days ago. Kim hasn't spoken a word to me since then besides 'hello'. She's also been avoiding me, going out of the way not to cross my path during the breaks between classes, and sitting away from me during classes we share. She'd also been noticeably grumpy. I mean that as in even with as little contact as I've been having with her, even those brief moments have been enough for me to tell that Kim has spent the last few days on a proper warpath. Heck, Monique's even started spent today sitting next to me rather than her so she wouldn't have to bear the wrath of Hurricane Kim.

I suppose that means that I've finally crossed the line into a level of weirdness that not even twelve years of history can overcome. I'm not really surprised. If I hadn't been there and someone started crazy talk of old gods it would have been enough to make me call the nice people in white to come and get whoever was doing the talking before they finally snapped and came at me with a butcher knife or something. Add onto that me leveling an accusation that her nice guy boyfriend was in some way just using her? Yeah, that might just have been enough for Kim to finally decide that it was time to give me my walking papers as her best friend.

None the less, I'm not going to just let this avoidance thing drag on which is why I'm currently lounging in the back of the gym watching Kim and Bonnie start what looks to be a truly epic cat fight. Ostensibly I'm here in relation to my position as mascot, so I can work my routine out so that it doesn't get in their way. In reality the moment this session is over, I'm gonna corner Kim by hook or by crook and force her to get whatever's bugging her out in the open, even if that means it's out the door with me afterward.

Better to lance the boil quick than to let it to fester.

As me and the rest of the uninvolved parties watch, Kim closes the distance between her landing point and Bonnie and without saying a word plucks the cell phone from the brunette's hand. Before Bonnie even has time to blink, Kim had the phone to her ear,

"She'll have to call you back. Don't worry. She should have plenty of time. She's about to have a large open space in her schedule where cheer practice used to be," Kim grinds out into the purloined phone before shutting it with a brisk flip of her wrist.

"What do you think," is as far as Bonnie managed to get into what no doubt promised to be an enlightened and well reasoned argument justifying her endangering the entire cheer team in order to make doe eyes at a phone, when Kim interrupts her fiercely.

"Bonnie. What the hell do you think you're doing?" Kim half growls half shrieks in that way that only a pissed of female can manage when they're trying to make a violent vocal point while still maintaining their inherent high pitched femininity. "Interrupting practice, mid routine, in the middle of the fucking pyramid? Are you trying to get someone hurt?"

Oh dear. Kim just swore. I wonder if this is what it was like the first time she heard me drop a vulgarity? I mean, in all the years that we've been together, she's always been a consummate good girl. And everyone knows that good girls don't swear. I mean at least when I finally broke the naughty word wall I at least had a history of goof-offedness to buffer everyone around me for the occasion. Kim sweating? That's like unheard of, unthought of, and completely uncontemplatable.

At this point, several of the cheer squad thought it might be a good idea to start inching their way towards the door. I did the same. Escape seemed like a very good idea at the time. Several other cheerleaders apparently had less finely honed self preservation instincts. Either that or their addiction to drama caused them to discard their common sense, because they decided it would be a better idea to stand around and watch what promised to be spectacular fireworks.

"Excuse me?" Bonnie also seemed to lack self preservation instincts, because rather than make desperate obsequious pleas in an attempt to stave off a very pissed off sixteen-forms-of-kung-fu, she instead decided to strike a pose that spoke of nothing but self-absorbed shock. Everything from the line of Bonnie's shoulders to the angle of her hips screamed that yes, she really was the center of the universe, and how dare Kim for not understanding that already. "Could you be any ruder? Interrupting my phone call is so not cool Kim. And what do you mean, saying I'll have plenty of time to call him back? Are you going to be canceling cheer practice so you can go off and save the world or something again?" Bonnie's teeth shown again and I had to admire how many animals her smile can resemble. This time it looked like a shark rolling its eyes back so it can bite.

"No," Kim ground out, and for a moment I can't help but compare the noise to something Jason would make. Alright, screw dignity. I start scampering towards the same exit the cheer leaders with enough brains to see a storm brewing are still inching towards. They can afford to look inconspicuous. They were closer than I was. If I'm gonna get out of here before World War III gets enacted I'm gonna have to cover a hell of a lot more ground first. "Cheer practice is going to go on as scheduled. You're just not going to be showing up. After all, you have to be on the cheer team in order to attend." The phone Kim had taken from Bonnie was beginning to creak beneath her gradually whitening knuckles as Kim put more and more effort into squeezing the phone and not doing the same to Bonnie's neck.

Bonnie's eyes widened as she finally got just what Kim was saying. "You're kicking me off the team?" Dear dead damned gods, her voice sounded like it could shatter glass. "You can't do that!" I had closed to maybe five feet from the door, my complete lack of subtlety in my escape allowing me to cover ground faster than the girls still inching away at a more inconspicuous pace.

"After all the times you've screwed up a formation and a practice, and all the times you could have seriously hurt someone when you did?" Kim growled. I was two feet away from the door. I could probably be out it in another second, but when I saw the girls right behind me, all of which had somehow developed a puppy dog pout, desperately pleading for me to help them, I sighed internally and knew I was gonna end up holding the door for them so they can bugger off to safety. Looks like I'm gonna be the last one with enough sense not to stand near a lightening rod in a storm out of the room. "I think I…"

It was during the middle of Kim's proclamation, and when I was reaching for the handle of the exit to the gym, that she was interrupted by the door swinging open and banging into the wall with a resounding 'clang'. Well, it should have been a clang. Seeing as I was right next to the door and thus caught up in its path while it was swinging open, and thus between it and the wall when it reached the end of its proscribed journey, the clang was more like a meaty 'thunk' than anything else.

Pinned between the door and the wall, and trying to ignore the handle in my spleen, I hear a voice from the other side of the door call out, "Pardon me. I'm looking for Ron Stoppable. Someone told me he was in here?"

Everyone in the gym turned to face the intruder at the door, and judging by the looks that swept up on their faces when they saw the speaker, I can take a good guess on just who it is that had accidentally walked in on what had promised to be a truly epic hair pulling cat fight. Despite the fact that I think my kidneys had ruptured, I grinned.

"Um, howdy?" the voice said again, and then broke down into a deep rumbling cough that sounded like it came from deep in the speakers chest. "Is Ron here or not? I'd really like to find him before he heads off for home." The speaker shed a few more wracking coughs, and then made a sniffling noise, like he had a runny nose and was trying to keep it at least in the nasal cavity.

I peeked my head from around the door, and waved at the speaker. "Right here Eddie."

"Ron!" the speaker exclaimed, sounding positively jolly now that he had found me. A few members of the cheer squad shuddered at that. All things considered, I can kind of see the reason for their reaction.

The man that filled the frame of the door could be described succinctly with one word: enormous. Not like Jason enormous, all hard muscle and scary scars. No, Eddie was the kind of enormous more accurately described as fat. Enormously fat. Grotesquely fat even. Standing at just above average height, he was nearly as wide as he was tall. Even the enormous long sleeved shirt that he wore, which probably had enough fabric to be converted into a credible sail for a boat, couldn't properly contain the great jowls of his stomach, which hung over his enormous jeans. The circumference of his arms was barely contained by his sleeves, and the seams seemed to be fighting a losing battle to hold the flesh they contained within them without rupturing. Besides the standard clothing you'd expect to find on any decently clad person like shirts, pants, and shoes, Eddie had a few more accessories to his outfit. A large medical face mask stretched tight across his face, and somehow his enormous hands had managed to be crammed into a pair of medical latex gloves. All this on its own would be enough to draw the distaste of the prim and slim members of an elite social group like cheerleaders, but added to the image was a general feel of unkemptness as well. Dotting his clothes were various leftovers you'd expect to find on a general slob of a person: ketchup and mustard and various other stains peppered the front of the shirt, trailing down the enormous belly like a road map of meals past. Great sweat stains dominated his arm pits and various other places of his body, some not quite where you'd expect to find sweat. His hair was thick and greasy, falling down into his eyes, which were a shockingly light shade of green, leaving a sheen of sweat all over his exposed forehead, and dark streaks stained the white of the surgical mask where his locks brushed against them.

In short, Eddie looked like a fat dirty slob. And that wasn't even counting the fact that he had a very distinct odor: part BO, part something musky and sickly, like you'd find in the bad parts of a hospital.

Ignoring everyone else in the room, which had suddenly fallen very silent when confronted with what many in the squad would consider the antithesis of their very souls, Eddie started to enter the room. He came up short when his enormous girth caught on the metal door frame of the entrance. He took a deep breath, sucking his gut in as much as he could and tried to push his way through, but still couldn't quite fit. After a second of desperate pushing and squeezing, he stopped, and pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and used the stained and ratty thing to wipe the sweat that had managed to form of his forehead. By then, I had managed to get myself out from behind the door and stood watching the scene with an amused smile. Eddie finally backed away and turned himself sideways. He got about halfway through the door this time, using his arms to shift his enormous belly up so he could squeeze even further before he got stuck again.

By now, the expressions of the cheer squad members were stuck halfway between disgust at the sheer repugnance of the figure that was before them, and a kind or morbid humor at watching him attempt to make his way through a door, an act that just about anyone else wouldn't have any trouble with. A few of the cheerleaders were starting to show concern. The sight was so disturbing that Kim had actually forgotten her argument with Bonnie, and was beginning to show genuine worry for the figure in front of her as he tried to force his bulk through the door frame. Tara was also beginning to look distraught, her hands clasped in front of her mouth as the blond watched with something resembling horror at the scene. A few others on the other hand were beginning to look incredibly amused at the plight of the big man before them. Marcella looked like she was trying to hide a smile at the sight, showing much more restraint than Bonnie. Bonnie's face was displaying a smirk that could only be described as malicious glee at watching Eddie struggle.

"You need a hand, Eddie?" I offered, my own grin fond as I watched the scene before me.

Eddie showed no embarrassment or even discomfort as he tried to force his bulk through the too thin opening. "Nope! Just about got it!" His voice was filled with cheer, as though he too found the whole process just as amusing as some of the observers. With a final heave he managed to twist himself around so his back was to us, getting the majority of his bulk through. With a last effort, and an almost audible pop as his belly finally cleared the space, he turned around with to face his audience. His face was covered for the most part by the surgical mask he had on but I could hear the humor in his voice, and see his eyes crinkling from his smile. He gave what could almost be a bow, though there was very little lowering involved, seeing as that might set his center of balance off and cause him to start rolling. "When you get to be this size you learn all the little tricks to get into those tight places!"

"Yeah," Bonnie snorted. "Tight for a hippo." The utterly tactless announcement and vicious attack on Eddie caused Kim to remember just what was happening before this interruption had thrown her for a loop. It also served to act as a chastisement for being needlessly cruel to the rest of the cheer leaders who had been finding the whole scene to be a little too amusing for what would be considered strictly proper in a polite setting. Several of them desperately schooled their expression to be more conciliatory then amused at what they no doubt considered to be a highly crippling condition. That condition: weighing more than a feather.

"Bonnie," Kim said sharply, sending a nervous look at Eddie in order to gauge just how badly the thoughtless jibe had damaged the poor boy's self esteem. "We really need to have a discussion over what is considered 'polite behavior'."

"Whatever, Kim," Bonnie drawled, examining her finger nails and looking superior to all the poor lowly mortals that surrounded her obviously divine presence.

"Now, now," Eddie interrupted, clasping his hands to his belly and laughing. "No need to be concerned, little lady," he assured Kim. "No crime in saying a big man is a big man." Turning to me, he extended both his arms. "Now get over here Ron! I ain't seen you in a dog's age!" With a chuckle, I took a deep breath, held it, and gave my old friend a hug. "You're still a skinny little fella, ain't you? You need to eat more! Pack on a bit of weight." The huge arms that enveloped me pressed me tightly against the enormous folds of his fat, and I held off escaping as long as I could, ignoring as best I could the strange sensations of being pressed into his large rolls of flesh. Finally, I tapped out, and after backing away a few feet, risked taking a breath again.

"Not all of us can pull it off like you can, Eddie," I tell him, grinning unashamedly despite the fact that I was almost positive that it would take me a good showering to get the smell that lingered around him off of me. The nearby cheerleaders were torn between trying to be polite to my friend, and cringing away in disgust at the thought of even being near something as repulsive as Eddie. "Looks like you've been taking care of yourself." I say this with an absolutely straight face, drawing disbelieving stares from more than a few onlookers.

Eddie threw back his head and laughed, before suddenly interrupting his joviality with yet another deep and wracking coughing streak. "Oh, I've been surviving! You look like you've managed to keep your head above water. Life treating you well?"

"As can be expected," I confirm. He let loose another rolling set of coughs, and it finally proved too much for Tara, who had been watching the whole thing with the kind of vapid wide eyed ignorance that actually served to make her more endearing.

"Um, excuse me," she said meekly, "but are you okay?"

Kim jumped in as well, though her expression was more cautious. "Do you need to sit down for a bit? You don't sound too hot," she offered, coming up to stand next to Tara. Her eyes darted to me and I could tell see the question in them. Was this another one of my strange friends? Then she seemed to realize that she was acknowledging my existence, and her eyes moved steadfast back to Eddie.

Bonnie proved unable to ignore the little hateful voice I've no doubt speaks to her in her head piped in. "Yeah, hauling all that weight around must be, like, so hard," she drawled.

I've no doubt she was expecting a certain type of reaction. The pretty common one when a socially elite and physically attractive person mocks a less well known and physically unappealing person is usually shame. The importance of the food chain and the valuable lessons on social inequity that high school seems so determined to impose on us dictates that Eddie quickly realize his own unattractiveness and vacate himself from the presence of the rest of the normal people. The reaction she got was not quite what she was expecting.

Eddie threw back his head, his lank hair tumbling at the motion, grabbed his belly, and let out another peal of laughter. "Now, now. It's a labor of love, carrying this around," and he patted his gut, causing the flesh to jiggle. "But if I ever got rid of it, why, I'd have to give up my position as an EMT!"

"You're on an emergency medical treatment team?" Kim asked, sounding shocked, and then realized just how much disbelief was lacing her voice, and quickly tried to cover her faux passé. "I mean, not that you couldn't, I'm sure…" She trailed off again, looking nervous as she committed the same error over again right away.

"Certainly, little lady!" Eddie proclaimed. "I'm a valuable member of the team!"

Tara spoke up slowly. "So, like, what do you do?"

"I wear a big shirt with an 'X' on the back and serve as an emergency landing pad for helicopters," he pronounced solemnly.

There was a moment of complete silence, which was then promptly broken by Liz and Marcella getting the joke and breaking out into snorting giggles. They quickly covered their mouths and turned away, trying to cover the fact that the unfeminine sounds had come from them. Kim's eyebrows shot up in surprise, and Bonnie looked a little miffed at her shot as Eddie's weight not quite working out the way she planned. Self deprecating humor instead of embarrassment? What madness is this?

Eddie continued on, showing no acknowledgment of the responses he had garnered. "Still, I don't rightly know how I managed to keep it all on me. Why, every time I sit around the house, I make at least two laps around it. With that much exercise, I should be shedding pounds like leaves." Jessica whose expression so far had firmly been on the 'concerned' side of the reaction fence, found herself inexorably being driven to the 'amused'. "Still, it makes ordering at restaurants easier. When they give me a menu, all I have to do is say 'yes please'." And now Tara was losing the battle against amusement, though she looked like the entire time she was giving ground she was berating herself for being a horrible, horrible person. "But sometimes it makes it so hard for me to do other things. I mean, when I tried to go to the beach, all the animal rights activists kept trying to drag me back into the water!" Now even Bonnie was smiling, and it looked a lot more sincere then it was when she was taking cheap shots.

By this point, the only one in the room, including me, who wasn't enjoying the stream of jokes was Kim. And it looked like the only thing keeping her from doing just that was her determination not to give in to peer-pressure. The corner of her lips kept twitching, and it looked like she was physically working her jaw to keep herself from succumbing to laughter. Eddie naturally saw this, and gave a low 'Hmmm' while leaning forward to peer at her. He rubbed his jaw in deliberation, before finally saying, "I'm so fat that when the weatherman said it'd be chilly outside I ran out with a bowl and a spoon."

And that did it. Kim let loose her own snort/giggle, and quickly covered her face with her hand when she started blushing. Eddie pumped his arm in success and proclaimed, "Victory!" before he was once again rocked with great wracking coughs. This spell was so bad he had to lean forward a bit, placing his hands on his knees to support himself as his tremendous frame shook. This time all the previously grinning cheerleaders showed concern, although Bonnie only marginally.

"Are you okay?" Tara asked again, moving closer to Eddie. I stood nearby, and was the only one not looking a little worried. "You sound like you might be sick." Her big soulful eyes dripped with concern.

"Nothing I ain't had before, and won't have again," Eddie squeezed out, before another smaller fit hit him.

I spoke up then, giving the girls an explanation since Eddie couldn't at the moment. "Eddie was born with a compromised immune system," I explain to them. "He gets sick from bugs that the rest of us can just ignore." The cheer squad all looked at me in surprise as I spoke. "He can get over them eventually, but it just takes him a big longer, and he just gets sick again faster."

Eddie spoke up then, continuing where I left off. "Just a step away from a bubble boy, I was. Though I think I grew into that little stereotype quite nicely on my own." Now that the girls knew his tragic past, the fat joke didn't quite give them the same amusement as it did earlier. Pity seemed to be the predominant emotion in the group. "When I was diagnosed, just a little after I was born, the doctors told my folks that I'd be lucky to see my ninth birthday. Well," he declared his head held high in pride, "I'll be seeing my eighteenth soon enough! Shows what they knew, the quacks."

"That," Tara proclaimed, her lips trembling, "that's so sad!"

"If you have a condition like that, shouldn't you be somewhere safe?" Kim asked, and then quickly backtracked. "I mean, not that you shouldn't be out and about, but shouldn't you be in a sterile room or something?" Then Kim's eyes widened and she blushed again. She reached up to massage her forehead, and was no doubt reminding herself of just how much she screwed up with Felix when she had discovered his handicap. "I'll just shut up now."

"Well what would be the point of living a life like that, little lady?" Eddie said easily, dismissing her unintentional slight. If anything he seemed to find her telling him he should get back in the bubble to be amusing. "Ain't no point in living a life like that. If I'm gonna go someday, I want that to be a day after I've seen everything there is to see, gone everywhere I've wanted to go. And most importantly ate everything I wanted to eat!" He patted his belly again, savoring the memory of what was some no doubt exquisite cuisine of dinners past. "Best way to live life is like each day is your last. Go out, I say, and live like you mean it!" His voice had risen in passion, and his solemn proclamation at the end rang proudly through the gymnasium, but was greeted in complete silence. He looked around, apparently coming back to himself, and realized that everyone in the gym was staring at him, mostly with expressions of quiet awe. "Um. What is it?" he finally asked, trying to figure out just why it was that everyone was staring at him. He rubbed the back of his head in mild embarrassment. I chuckled at the sight. Eddie is the one I learned that move from.

Finally, Tara spoke up. Her eyes were wide in admiration. "That's, that's just so brave!" she declared, and then did something which instantly put her in my good book for life. She darted forward and gave Eddie a great big hug, ignoring the sweat and smell without a second thought. Everyone in the room was taken aback by that, most of all Eddie.

"Ah," he stammered, and gently patted her back with one of his big hands with the same care that you'd handle a crystal statue with. "Well, shucks, thanks little lady."

Tara firmly held on even longer than I did, before pulling away with a smile. "It's just so amazing to see someone living such an inspirational life like that!" she declared. "I just want to say good luck, and I hope you make it to your eightieth birthday too!"

Eddie gave a low contemplative 'hmm' sound. "Well, I thank you right kindly, little lady." He appeared to make up his mind about something and nodded. "Tell you what. You ever have a problem with one of your boyfriends, you come tell me right off, and I'll give 'em a big brother speech that'll set 'em straight right away. How's that sound?"

And just like that, Eddie, whom by social conventions could be considered so far beneath these girls notice officially received every last one of their acceptance. It didn't surprise me in the least, and I couldn't even bring myself to feel jealous that he had accomplished in under an hour what had taken me months to do. Eddie just had that kind of way about him.

The meeting quickly degenerated into a group decision to have Eddie watch their routine. With his eyes on them, they put on a truly inspired performance, one of the best I'd ever seen from them. Eddie sat beside me in the bleacher, and when it ended, he gave encouraging shouts and clapped his big meaty palms together loud enough to echo through the gym with the same kind of volume you'd expect when the bleachers were full instead of just having two people sitting in them. Afterward, before the girls went to shower and change, they made Eddie promise that if he waited, they'd take him out to the best restaurant in town so he could continue his quest to sample all the delicacies the world had to offer.

And when they were gone to the locker room, it was just him and me left in the gym. We sat side by side in silence, the bleachers bending slightly under Eddie's weight.

Finally I spoke up. "It really is good to see you again, Eddie."

"Worried that I'd finally catch the big one and fulfill the prophecy those quacks made all those years ago, eh?" he rumbled amused.

"Eddie, we both know when you finally do die it sure isn't gonna be from sickness," I told him with a wry grin. "You made sure of that back then."

His chuckle was darker this time, reflecting my own mood when I reflected back on that night at Wannaweep. "Aye, that we did. Hold up a sec, partner," he told me, and then cocked his head to the side. "Why don't you come on out, little lady?" he said slightly louder than he was before. I cocked my head at him, confused. Who was he talking too? "I know you're there," Eddie continued, not sounding angry. His voice was soothing as he encouraged someone who wasn't there to show themselves. "You were there for Stephanie, you were there for Jason, and you were there for Vanessa. It only seems proper that you be here for me too. Ain't no shame in it." My eyebrows shot up. Did he mean…

Kim emerged from beneath the bleachers, a dozen yard or so away from where the two of us were sitting. She looked embarrassed, both at once more spying and once more being caught at it. She glanced up at me, and then her eyes quickly darted to the side, refusing to meet my gaze.

"Secret listening again, Kim?" I asked. My voice was colder than I intended it to be. But honestly, it pissed me off. She spends half a week treating me like I didn't exist, and then she has the gall to once more interfere in one of the most intimate portions of my life without a second thought or a word of apology? Yeah, I think I had a right to be just a little pissed.

"I'm sorry," she says softly.

Though she was speaking to me Eddie answered her, before I had a chance to vent my opinion on just what her apology meant to me at the moment. "No problem, little missy. Or as you like to say, 'no big', eh?" He grinned as she finally managed to drag her eyes away from the distant point in the distance she'd been trying to make out so intently. "Don't be surprised, little lady. You've been a big part of our Ronnie's life. What makes you think we wouldn't know about you?" This admission surprised both me and Kim.

"But when the first girl, Stephanie, she said that they had only just found my Ron," she said startled. Now I turned my surprised look on Kim. 'Her Ron'? What the hell?

"Ah, dearie. Much as I love my brothers and sisters, they can be just a little bit oblivious," Eddie said with a tone of an exasperated patience for our kin. "Anyone who pays more attention to the news then it takes long enough to change the channel has heard of Kim Possible. I've known were our Ron," and here he made his own emphasis on the possessive term, making Kim's eyebrows furrow almost imperceptibly, "for years. But Ron could have found us on his own, if he had wanted to. If he wasn't ready yet, then it ain't no place of mine to push him. I'm a patient fellow."

I sighed at that. Well, there go all my delusions about having successfully escaped notice on my own merits. "You've always been the enduring type, I'll give you that," I admit.

Eddie let out another deep rumbling chuckle. He followed it with small set of coughs, not as deep as the ones before, more like he was clearing his throat. "Aye. Enduring. If there's any word for it, that'd be the one, I reckon." His too pale eyes turned to me. Up close, I could make them out in more detail. It wasn't that they were pale; it was more that they were clouded, as though some unknown ailment had caused them to blur. A thin sheet of fever sweat glistened on his forehead. "That's always been my way, Ron. You know it. Hell, you're a fair hand at it yourself." He leaned back, his eyes focused on mine. Stephanie's had called to me, Jason's had tested me, and Vanessa's had pierced me. Eddie's eyes, they only watched me. They held the same amused tint to them that seemed to color most of Eddie's actions, an air of non-judgmental humor that said they'd never laugh at you, but they wouldn't hesitate to laugh with you. "I've followed your exploits out there with the little lady, partner. I've seen you, always in the background. Sometimes you're limping. Other times you're bleeding. Most times, you're both. That's a lotta abuse you've taken, over the years." He settles back, and beneath him the bleachers tremble. "Abuse you'd never have taken, if you hadn't been out and about, dragged out into saving the world by the little miss here."

Sitting there like that, he suddenly didn't seem so amusing. It was as though his air of big brotherly care, that almost paternal aura he seemed to emit had suddenly been switched off. His body emitted heat, a lot of it, too much even for a person that size. His bulk wasn't amusing anymore, it was overbearing. It had the feel of a large boulder perched atop a thin spire of rock, the kind that would someday fall and crush anything unlucky enough to be beneath it. The change didn't affect me. I've known for a long time just what lay beneath his friendly stained exterior. It hit Kim harder. The only impression she had of Eddie so far was the big friendly sick guy who liked to tell fat jokes. Hearing him virtually admit to blaming her for all the injuries he'd seen me accumulate over the years, combined with the protectiveness he'd shown Tara for little more than a hug, it no doubt conjured in her head that just maybe this big man beside her hadn't been kidding when he promised to look out for the little blonde that had embraced him. That this seemingly inconspicuous cheerful fellow might have a protective streak in him even wider then his waist, and even fiercer then his hunger. And that just maybe, she had somehow evoked that streak.

We both ignored her as this realization spread through her. Eddie kept talking. "And why did you take it? Why'd you keep on going back for more and more? Because," he shifted till his elbows rested on his knees, his eyes locked on mine. "You're like me: you endure. No matter what the world throws at you, no matter what rests on your shoulders, no matter how much they try to beat you down and grind you to dust, you endure. More than that, you push on. When there's nowhere to go but foreword, you don't bother looking back. When there's nothing left but hopelessness, you smile." Eddie let loose another deep chuckle. "Which is why I'm pretty certain just what you're gonna say when I ask you to come back with me, partner. But I'm gonna ask anyway. Will you come back to us, brother?"

I smiled at that, touched despite myself just how well he knew me. "No, brother."

KP let loose a whoosh of breath, and I noticed her finally. She certainly wasn't having any trouble looking at me now. Her eyes were wide, and she had that look on her face that I'd come to recognize in the last few weeks: epiphany. The realization that there was some aspect of me, some part that she had always known was there, but never really recognized before, having been so close to me while it was developed that she hadn't noticed it growing till it was already fully formed right in front of her.

Eddie just nodded. "And that, I reckon, was why I never bothered to come and get you before. I knew that there ain't no way we were going to be getting you back less you were damn well ready to come back." His eyes crinkled in a grin, and suddenly there was nothing threatening about the fat man beside me.

"Eddie!" Tara called from across the gym. Her and a few others from the squad were clustered around the exit of the locker room. She waved excitedly at the man beside me, smiling broadly. "You ready to hit Chez Henri?"

Eddie raised his hand back, and leveraged himself up off the bench. The sudden loss of weight caused an audible groaning sound to emit from the bench as the vast tension on it was suddenly removed. "Now, if you'll pardon me, I reckon it's about time for me to head out. I hear good things about this 'Chez Henri'." He turned back to me, and in a voice that was far too cheerful told me, "Watch out Ron. You know whose next, don't you?"

"Yeah," I nod solemnly.

"Be careful. You two are a lot alike. No matter how I pick at it, up here in this old noggin, I can't see any way for this to end good." And without another word, he headed for the door, greeted by giggles from the good looking girls who were waiting for him.

And in the suddenly quiet gymnasium, with the dying light on the afternoon piercing the misted glass, Kim turned to me and said, "Ron, we need to talk."

About time. I've been wanting to talk for a week.

There's something about a gymnasium at dusk. Gymnasiums are by definition places of activity, or excitement. It is in them that the teaming masses gather, shouting their adulation for the modern gladiators on the field. It is on them that the wills and strengths of two opposing teams clash and release. But at dusk, with the reddening light leaking through the windows painting the wide space inside rosy in hue, the echoing silence of the empty place becomes something different. Like a monument to broken things, to empty gift boxes, to aging dreams. As these thoughts drift lightly through my head, I lay on the bleachers I had been sitting on a while ago. I'd moved far enough away to escape the lingering fever smell that remained even after Eddie had been gone for most of an hour.

I don't mind the delay. KP was in the showers, changing out of her somewhat damp cheer clothes before we had our overdue conversation. I was content to wait, and to reflect on my thoughts. The conversation with Eddie lingered in my head. His offer had been straightforward, honest, and without guile in it. Of all my ghosts of camps past who had visited so far, he was the only one who made no effort to convince, to persuade, to blackmail. It didn't surprise me. Eddie was, and still is, the big brother of our strange little family. I think that of all my brothers and sisters, Eddie was the one I felt closest too. Stephanie, she was the bratty spoiled little sister. Jason, he was the younger brother desperately trying to step up into an adult role, quick to anger and strike out. Vanessa, she was the older sister, a little cruel in her caring, not afraid to guide, but not afraid to get a few cheap laughs out of guiding to the wrong destination. And the other. The last of my kin. To continue the metaphor…

He was my long lost twin.

Eddie was right. The more I dwell on it, there's no way this is going to end well.

"Sorry for the wait," Kim said, quietly approaching me. She had a towel wrapped around her hair, still damp from her shower. She was wearing her usual ensemble, the pink top and baggy cargoes. Without a word, I waited for her to sit beside me, a few inches away. So close and yet so far.

We sat in quiet for a few minutes. Kim would glance at me every once and a while, obviously trying to figure out how to start this conversation. I didn't give her any help. For all that I was waiting for this, I was equally dreading it. So I let my gaze linger on the crimson highlights that twilight painted our surroundings with.

After a few false starts from Kim, I took pity on her. "In the beginning, there were no gods. Just man, crawling his way out of the filth of his animal heritage." I felt Kim's eyes on me, though she remained silent. "Those were hard times for man. He didn't have the tools for the jobs that he did later. He had less to hunt with, just crude rocks and sharp bones. He had less medicine, not even the folk remedies that would crop up eventually. He had less to shelter himself with too no lean-tos or houses, just caves. Because of that, man got injured a lot. And almost every injury festered, rotted, and people got sick.

"When people back then got sick, most of the time, that was the end. No medicine, no hope. They'd linger for a while. And while they lingered, they'd despair. They would be able to see themselves dying, feel the changes in them as the bugs and dirt slowly killed them. Not just them, but their loved ones. Mother's seeing children die, lovers watching lovers wither away. And that despair didn't just disappear. Everyone everywhere, all that despair, all those emotions that were evoked by every illness, it began to build up. And eventually enough of it gathered together, and compressed. Like, what's it called," I trailed off, snapping my fingers searching for the school word. "Like what happens in stars…"

"Fusion?" Kim supplied, saying nothing else. She was resting her arms on her legs, glancing at the floor between them. I glanced at her, and could see from the expression on her face that she was content to just hear what I was saying, waiting for me to get to the point at my own pace. I nodded, taking the word she supplied as the right one, even if I wasn't sure.

"Fusion. When it got packed in enough, when there was enough there, it was like all the feelings became alive. That was the first god. He was called Nurgle. He was the lord of pestilence and rot, of sickness of all kinds. He was born of man, and he looked upon man, and those who were wretched in sickness looked back and prayed to him.

"Sometime afterward, man grew more intelligent, more crafty, more skilled with tools. It was at this time that the second and third gods were born. No one's really sure which one was first. The first one that began to answer man was Khorne, the blood god. You see, as man got more crafty and more populous, they began to fight against each other. There were limited resources back then, and if a village or a tribe couldn't grow enough to live, then they could always go and take it from the tribe that had enough. Some even stopped trying to grow or gather their own food. People began killing people for all kinds of reasons. Just like with Nurgle, the hate and rage and blood lust gathered together, and Khorne was born from it. He was the lord of brass and iron and blood, who took the skulls of his enemies and used them for his throne."

"Then why is there confusion over who was second or third?" Kim asked. The room was very quiet, our conversation barely stretching away from us. The light of twilight was beginning to darken as the sun sank lower and lower in the sky. And in this murk I spoke of ancient times and pain and suffering.

"Because of what the third god was. At the same time that people began killing, they began lying as well. For all that the strong and powerful could survive, so could the deceivers, the manipulators, the crafty. Some of them began to learn other secrets of the world. Magic, it was called back then. Science might be a better word for it now. Most of it was just simple stuff, like what burned better, or how two elements could be combined to make something better. But even someone figuring out that ammonia hurt in the eye, or that arsenic was poisonous, or that even oil burned back then would seem amazing. And these people would lie, deceive, manipulate, whatever it took to survive, and to get what they needed to keep surviving. Just like with the other two, all the emotions coalesced, and from it was born Tzeentch, the changer of ways. He was the lord of change and magic and deception. Maybe he was born third, or maybe he just hid away, gathering power and knowledge and manipulating from behind the scene until finally he was ousted after Khorne came to be."

I paused, and Kim whispered into the dark. "Were there any others?"

"Just one more. Once more, time passed, and civilization progressed. Finally, some measure of peace was established. And when that happened, people were able to relax, to think of other things besides desperate survival. And when they relaxed, they started to find ways to enjoy their relaxation. A big way to enjoy themselves, was, well, sex," I said bluntly. Kim glanced at me startled by that, blushing slightly. I gave a little half quirk of a smile and continued. "They were able to do it for more than just procreation. People began to get, well creative. Fetishes, hedonism, different partners, different roles, well, you get the idea. Not just sex either. People began to experiment with all kinds of excess. Drugs, decadence of all kinds, even pain and masochism." Ugh. All the talk of killing and sickness and lies was easier to talk about then just how many different ways began to bump uglies. Violence really is overplayed in the media I guess. "The process went like the other three, and from it Slaanesh was formed. Slaanesh was the hermaphrodite god/goddess, the lord of pleasure, the lady of pain, the sovereign of satisfaction."

"Stephanie," Kim said. "She was pretty, um, open about a lot of things. And Jason was plenty violent. Vanessa was lying deceitful bitch." Yup, definitely some resentment over the 'red headed tart' comment. "And Eddie was about as sick as they came." She was putting two and two together and getting four.

"Yes. Eventually, new gods were raised, most of them probably just pleasant stories that some people decided to believe in. Maybe one or two of the other gods over time got enough behind them to form, but those four were the oldest, and even if there are other gods out there, those four are the strongest. Whatever it was, they didn't need worship, just that people felt their influence. Eventually, worship went out of fashion, people moved on, but they remained. The four Elder Gods. Because of how violent and vicious they all were, because of how primal they are, they became known as the Gods of Chaos."

"Ron," she said, finally looking right at me, worry in her eyes. "What happened at Wannaweep. You can tell me now, can't you?"

"Yeah. Yeah I can. That one, the one whose name I still won't say," I leaned back, propping myself up on the bleacher behind me, my voice as distant as my gaze as I continued, "his father was researching some old ruins. There were notes about the old gods, rituals, that kind of thing. Nothing really that scary or detailed. Pretty much just the creation myth that I just told you. Maybe a few old symbols and half described rituals. It didn't matter that much really. Like I said, it was just the six of us going out into the woods to have some fun. Tell a few ghost stories, see who freaks out the most and poke fun at them the next day. That kind of thing." A half grin came over my face as I gazed back in my minds eyes to that night long ago, the playful ribbing and nervous laughs. "And in the end, as old as the gods are, as half-hearted as our attempt is, they heard us anyway. Maybe it was because of how long it'd been since anyone deliberately worshiped them, or the day was just some randomly significant day to them, maybe the stars were right, or maybe they just did it for shits and giggles. Whatever the reason for it, they heard us, and they answered us."

"How?" Kim interrupted. "You said the same thing before, that they answered you. How did they answer you?" She was looking at me intensely now, her mind working to analyze everything I told her, trying to piece it together in a way that made since, that gave her a course of action, or even a frame of reference.

"I don't know how it was for the others. For me, it was as though there were four voices in my head, speaking. Also, there was just this sence of pressure," I shuddered violently at the memory. "It was like….It was like standing beneath a really big overhang of a cliff. One so big that it blots out the whole sky, and the only thing you can think of is how much it would suck if that overhang were to suddenly collapse, and how there was nothing you could do against it if it were to. They spoke to me, and I spoke back to them. In the end, it changed me, just like it changed all the others."

"Changed you how? I can see how it affected all the others," Kim said, leaning in intently, "but what did it do to you? I knew you before you left for that camp, and I was back with you right afterward. I never noticed anything different then."

"You only think you knew how it changed them," I told her sharply. She blinked and backed up in startled shock at my vehemence. "You think you have any idea what they were like before hand? You don't. And you don't understand what happened at all, you just think you do." Kim opened her mouth to protest, and I cut her off, it being my turn to lean in. "I can tell you're thinking that it was a bad thing. You're probably thinking that they ripped out our souls, that they warped us horribly, that what happened was a bad thing. Kim, it wasn't. They didn't lie to us, they didn't cheat us, they didn't trick us. Kim, we worshiped them willingly! They gave us what we wanted Kim, exactly as we wanted. We still worship now, not because we have to, but because we choose to!"

"But why?" she shouted, her voice echoing through the gymnasium. "The more I hear the more I can only think that the gods are evil! They were born from hate and pain and death! When the others started showing up, you looked so hurt and scared! What am I supposed to think? What's going on!" she shrieked, all that was pent up in her coming out. She was shaking in near rage, her eyes blurring with tears at the intensity of her emotions.

"I wasn't hurt or scared because of the others, Kim," I tell her, softly. "How could I? I love them. They are my brothers and sisters. The reason I was hurt and scared wasn't because of our faith, because of the argument we had. I told you, that fight was massive. The four you've met so far? They're like family to me. It's because of the last one, the one that's coming next, that I've been hurt, that I've been scared."

That stopped her in her tracks. I don't blame her. You don't hear teenage boys using a word like 'love' that easily. "And as for the gods, they came from a time before words like 'good' and 'evil' ever existed. No matter how they were formed, do you really think that anything as complex and vast as the gods would be so simple?"

"What do you mean?" her anger had gone out of her. She only looked lost and confused now.

"Tell me, did Eddie look unhappy to you?" She shook her head. "It's because he wasn't. Do you remember what he said to me, about enduring? In the old days, when sickness was untreatable, death was always the inevitable ending. And if something is inevitable, no matter how hard you struggle, no matter how fast you run or how hard you fight, then why fear it? If you've reached your last moments, then go with a smile and a laugh, not just for yourself, but for those you'll leave behind. Nurgle was always a joyous god, laughing and joking no matter what. He was freedom from despair and fear, he was a joyous release." This revelation struck her hard, and her beautiful green eyes were wide.

Beautiful green eyes? Where had that come from?

Shaking that random though from my head, I continued. "Khorne wasn't just a god who blessed those who were attacking and killing indiscriminately. He was also the god of those who were desperately defending themselves, who were fighting righteously. He was also the favored god of mothers."

"Mothers?" Kim said, honestly shocked by this. I could see her trying to wrap her mind around that. I don't blame her. Modern times has mother hood as an image of maternal warmth and caring.

"I'm told that childbirth is very painful," I inform her dryly, and she blushed at what appeared to be a very sudden change of topics. "I hear it's a time honored tradition for the woman going through it to swear unimaginable agony on the men responsible for it. Khorne's name was frequently used in the old days during those times." Despite herself, KP let loose a giggle at that. "His name was also used when mothers were protecting their children during hard times. Think of it as momma bear syndrome."

Kim seemed to struggle with that thought for a moment, trying to digest it. "What about the lying one? Tzee-whatever-it-was."

I gave her a small smile. "Tzeentch. Did you know, KP, that the best lies become truth? That if you do it well enough, people will believe the lie so thoroughly that even if they were confronted with the truth, they wouldn't believe it? Let me ask you something Kim. Do you know what the most beautiful lie is?" She shook her head, not interrupting, just letting me continue. "It's when there's no chance of success, when the situation is doomed, when there's no way out, and no way to save yourself or the ones you love, and you tell yourself that everything will be alright, that you'll make it through just fine. Do you know what that lie is? They have a word for it. It's called hope. And like all the best lies, if you just tell yourself it enough, it just might come true. Kim, that's a lie we've both had to tell ourselves a few times in the past."

There was nothing she could say to that. So I continued. "As for Slaanesh, it was more than just sex. It was satisfaction. Physical satisfaction was a big part of it, but it was more than just doing the horizontal mambo." Again, she blushed. "It was the satisfaction of completing a sculpture, the satisfaction of taking a canvas and making a beautiful painting upon it. It was the satisfaction of crafting symphonies, of perfecting a craft, of anything that gives one a glow of accomplishment upon completion. Slaanesh was praised by artisans of all variety, a muse to all those who would create or strive for perfection. Slaanesh is like signing up for a dozen clubs, cheer leading, and saving the world, and feeling good about getting it all done perfectly." I give her a pointed look at that, and she blushed again turning away. I know she'd never considered her dedication to her chosen tasks in that way, and now she'd always probably equate them with Slaanesh's other aspects. Heh. She's gonna be blushing a lot more at random moments after this I think!

"Fine," she stuttered, still getting over my cheap shot at her. "Maybe not evil. Then how did it change you? How did it change the rest? What were they like before hand, if what happened to them wasn't bad?"

I was silent for a moment, and I sank my head into my hands, once more gazing at nothing. Finally I spoke up. "Stephanie's mother conceived her young. As I understand, the father was a sleazy douche who used her mother for a quickie, lied to her, and then left her high and dry when she got pregnant. Afterward, Stephanie's mother joined a church, and began to focus on how horrible sex was, on how much a sin it was. She'd tell Stephanie endlessly, often in graphic lewd detail about how depraved sex was. When Stephanie arrived at camp, she didn't have a single piece of clothing that left an exposed inch on her." Kim stared at me at that. It was a big difference from the bluette sex bomb that was in the hallowed halls of Mad Dog Middleton a few weeks ago. "Stephanie didn't know how to tell her mom, was scared to tell her, that she already found boys attractive, that she when she heard the stories her mom told her she was secretly fantasizing about it. She also didn't know how to tell her mom that it wasn't just boys she was fantasizing about."

Kim blushed again at that no doubt remembering Stephanie's offer to share KP with me. "Jason…" I trailed off again, this time my fingers clenching into a fist so quickly they popped loudly at the motion. "Jason's stepfather was like every bad cliche you've ever been warned about by counselors. An abusive, jobless, angry, vicious drunk. Back then Jason was a hell of a lot smaller than he is now. He was also already missing a good number of teeth and had to wear dentures to conceal it. He," and I made quotation marks in the air, "'fell down the stairs' a lot." I snorted. "Fell down them after he got between his stepfather and his mother when the useless fucker was coming after her."

I levered myself back off the stairs behind me, looking solemnly at Kim. "Vanessa was already blind by then, but she hadn't been born that way. She got sick, she never mentioned from what, and the end result was that she lost her vision. She spent all her time angry about what she had lost, about what had been taken from her. She hated the way she had went from a normal girl to a crippled, pitied glass statue. She used to love soccer and softball, and suddenly it was all taken from her. As for Eddie, well you know the story there. He had to beg, plead, hell, by the end of it he had to threaten to get his parent to let him come to camp. In the end, I think the only reason they did was that they just couldn't afford the doctor bills anymore. I think they were hoping that he'd be able to have a few moments like a normal child, and then pass on from whatever he caught out in the wilderness happy with those brief moments."

"That's horrible," Kim whispered. "Not just Eddie. All of them. Was there a single happy child besides you in that group?"

"We were all a bit broken," I whispered back. Kim's head snapped to me in a heartbeat.

"All of them besides you, right?" she demanded.

"All of us, Kim. I was just broken more subtly then them," I whisper back.

"How?" And now she has her hands on my shoulders, forcing me to meet her gaze. "How were you broken, Ron? How?" Her eyes are narrowed. I can see her mind working behind those eyes, so close to mine. After the stories she had heard of the other four, of hearing myself compare myself to them, she was now desperately trying to figure out how. Because if I was truly broken, and she had never known, that would mean she had failed me. That would mean that just like she had worried over after Jason that while she was saving the world and helping strangers, she wasn't saving her best friend, that she wasn't helping the one she really wanted to help.

I can't let that worry fester in her. Even if we are fighting, though by now I think the fight was far from both of our thoughts, I can't let my KP have that kind of doubt in her. I reached out my hand, putting one on the back of her head, and pull her into an embrace slowly. She resisted at first, but then I whispered in her ear. "I can't tell you now, Kimberly. It wasn't like with the others. And I had help, even before then, I had someone there for me." I grin, pressing my face against her hair so she can feel me doing it. "Well, two some ones. You were there for me too. And I promise you, I will tell you Kim. I swear it."

She shook against me, and then returned my embrace, pulling me tightly, clutching me fiercely. My terrible Kimzilla, already plotting a way to drag just who it was and how they hurt me out of me, so she can track them down and return it tenfold. We stayed like that for some time, in the now dark gym, before we separated.

As Kim sniffled again, rubbing her eyes, I continued, looking away and pretending I wasn't seeing her moment. I might have been rubbing my own eyes a little bit, but no one can ever prove that. Ever. "When I said they changed us, Kim, I meant that they released us. They gave us freedom, the power to overcome what was in front of us. The power to be able to be what we truly desired. They gave us exactly what we wanted, KP, and all they asked of us was to remember them, to give them glory and prayers."

"From the way you were being all mysterious about it, can you blame me for wondering if maybe they had done something physical to you?" Kim muttered, sounding aggrieved. "I was worried that they had mutated you or something!" She said the last bit as a joke, trying to make light of the situation. Unfortunately, her gambit failed.

"They did that too," I admit, and her head whipped to face me so fast her hair struck me in the face. "We're a lot better at hiding it, but every one of us is more than we once were."

"What do you mean?" she asked, her worry coming back in full force.

"I mean, that while we can conceal it, every one of us were just as changed, some of us even more then when that meteorite nailed Shego and gave her comet powers," I said seriously. I reached out and grasped her stunned hand as she stared at me with slack jaws. "I mean it Kim. I've never used it. After we parted ways, I deliberately stayed away from it, but when I brought up Shego it was for a reason. Do you remember what Eddie said, about me and the other one, about it how it won't end well? Well no matter how hard I think about it, I can't find any reason for him not to be right. That means I might end up fighting them. If you're there when it happens, treat everyone of them as though they were at the same level as Shego. They're all at least that level."

"First of all, you can bet every naco in existence that I'm going to be there," Kim snapped at me, looking more aggrieved at me doubting her then at the revelation that I had secretly been mutated by ancient gods. With all the weirdness we'd been through, it really wasn't a surprise there. Heck, I'd been a giant beaver before. That's about as mutated as you can get. "And second of all, all of them? I mean, I can see Jason and Eddie, but I'm pretty sure I could take Stephanie and Vanessa with no trouble," she snorted, remembering the sex bomb and the blind girl, and using that as a measuring post of their danger level. I have to cut that off now, before it sets in too deep. I grab her chin harshly and force her gaze to mine.

"Those two especially. Vanessa is beholden to the god of deceit, manipulation, and magic. She doesn't need eyes to be dangerous as hell. And Stephanie is an acolyte of the sovereign of pain and pleasure. If you hit Stephanie as hard as you can, she'd probably enjoy it. And it's really hard to fight someone who's getting off on pain. They don't back off or go down like others would. Not to mention Stephanie, for all her focus on sex, is probably the most vicious of all of us when it comes down to it." I can see my words startled her, though at my blunt appraisal of Stephanie's abilities made her flush again. "If you find yourself against anyone of them, you go into it at full speed and maximum caution. It's been a while since I've seen any of them go full tilt, and I don't know what tricks they might have developed by now."

My seriousness reaches her, and her eyes harden into emerald chips. "Got it Ron." And I could see that she did. I could also see her gaze resting on me, evaluating me. If the others were so dangerous with their gifts, then what about me? I could see it there, her eyes wondering. I've never touched the gifts of chaos, at least not where anyone could see them, could recognize them. Just what was her Ron capable of, her eyes asked me.

But it wasn't time to answer those questions. We weren't just sitting in this dark gym to hear about me.

"Your turn Kim." She blinked at that, apparently not realizing what I was getting at. I filled her in. "Your turn to talk. Just what the hell has been going on these last few days?"

She looked startled, as though she was only just remembering that for the last few days she's had a glacier on her shoulder when it comes to me. She actually blinked, and had to take a second to remember just what it was she had been intending to say when she had told me we had to talk.

When she finally collected herself, she actually sighed and leaned back. "Well, after everything you've said, it suddenly doesn't seem nearly as big as it did this morning," she admitted, sounding rather embarrassed.

"I don't care. The last few days you've been treating me like shit, and I think I deserve to know why," I tell her bluntly.

She flinched at that, and then bowed her head. "I..I need to tell you I'm sorry for that first of all. It wasn't anything you did. I, well, I," she stuttered for a second, before swallowing her pride and being honest. "The other day, in the tree house, I was wrong to snap at you. I had just sat there and told you how I'd always be there for you, and then the first thing I do after that is storm out like a bitch. I was ashamed of that." Her face is matched her hair again. I know how much it took for her to force those words out. Kim doesn't handle her mistakes very well. And this one in particular must have been especially hard for her to say. That was like a big time epic super huge mistake.

"So what?" I ask her bluntly. She wilted at my response. I know she was hoping that her apology would be enough, but you know what, it really wasn't. If that was all there was to it, then it was going to take something bigger than a half hearted admittance to make up for it. I was thinking nacos. Lot's of them.

She took a deep breath, and pressed on. "Right after I stormed out, Eric asked me to the junior prom." The moment she said that she looked at me desperately and grabbed my hand with hers. "I told him I'd have to think about it," she rushed desperately, talking fast and breathlessly. I can't help but wonder what's got her all in a tizzy. I mean, yeah, if the two of them were going together it would suck for me. The two of us have been going together as just friends for a while, but I'd already kind of resigned myself to the fact that I was gonna go stag this time. "And after I had got home that night and had time to calm down, well, I did what you said. And you were right," she broke off.

Now it was my turn to be confused. "Wait, what did I tell you to do and what was I right about? I mean, just in case Rufus can't remember," I finished off lamely, covering myself nicely over the fact that I had no idea what she was talking about it. I don't think it worked completely, because KP rolled her eyes at me and gave that long suffering sigh I'm so familiar with.

"About Eric," she prompted. "I had Wade look into him. And you were right. It took Wade thirty seconds to figure out that Eric had no history."

"Wait, Eric had no history?" Now I'm really confused. How could the guy have no history?

"No birth records, no school records, no previous addresses, nothing," Kim explained. "Whoever Eric is, he's not who he said he was."

"Great googly moogly!" I yelp. "That's just wrong." Kim gave me a weird look.

"Why is this such a surprise? You were the one who suggested there was something wrong with him in the first place," she exclaimed, exasperated at what she no doubt thought was my overreaction.

"Yeah, but I thought he was just some smarmy player trying to get in your pants for bragging rights or something!" I exclaimed. Kim gaped at me as I continued. "I mean, I figured the worst you would find was that he had another girlfriend on the side or something, or that he was gonna try and get you on drugs! No record? This is big!" I proclaimed, getting up to pace the floor restlessly in front of Kim.

She did nothing but gape at me for a few long moments, before finally, she broke down and started giggling. Softly at first, and then louder and louder till she was rolling on the floor laughing out loud. ROFLOL. Heh. Monique would love this. Never thought I'd see that in real life. Now it was my turn to stare at her in consternation, something that set her off even more. Finally, despite my confusion, I can't help but chuckle a bit too. I sit down, and wait for Kim's own laughing spell to die down. When it finally does, I give her a hand to help her up, even as she used the other to wipe laughing tears off her face.

"So what happened then? What was with the cold shoulder routine?" I asked. Kim was leaning against me comfortably now, her legs splayed out on the bench besides us. Whatever tension between us was already fading.

"I guess," she said softly, her own voice echoing the uncertainty of her thoughts, "I guess it was partly because I was so ashamed of what I had done, and that I didn't know how to apologize. I'm sorry Ron." She looked up over her shoulder so she could see meet my eyes when she apologized. I could see the sincerity there.

"Accepted, KP. See, that wasn't so hard," I grinned back at her. And it wasn't. It was easy actually. Hell, if KP could take all the weirdness I brought to the table, than I could take the few bumps that her own little flaws brought to it. "But what was the other part?"

Kim kicked off of me so she could sit upright properly. She hunched over, resting one elbow on her knee, and put her chin in her palm so that her head was tilted towards me. She gave me a small smile. "I guess the other part was me dealing with the fact that I had been used." She gave a small sad snort. "I spent a good bit of time crying, and asking myself if I'd ever find someone who would honestly love me, and feeling lonely."

I let loose a long breath of air, regarding her for a moment, before reaching out and swatting her upside the back of her head lightly. She yelped and her chin slipped off her hand. She turned to me with a grimace only to find my finger in her face. "Now that's quitter talk, KP! So you had some bad luck? That's no reason to quit! I mean, look at me," and I gestured down at myself, milking the goofy for all it was worth. KP arched an eyebrow at that, trying desperately not to smile at my silliness. "I get shot down all the time, but you don't see me giving up! I get right back up on that horse and try again." Kim stops trying to hold it back, and answers my own goofy grin with a brilliant smile of her own. I reached out and took one her hands with mine. In a serious tone, I continue. "Kim. Don't let one bad experience get you down. I'm sure that there's someone out there who can make you as happy as you deserve to be. Somewhere out there, as long as you don't stop looking."

Her large eyes met mine, and she rested her free hand on top of our joined ones. In a soft voice she whispered, "Out there. In here."

What?

Her free hand came up, and rested gently against my cheek, the softness of her fingers offset by the thick calluses' that hard combat had gifted her with. The combination of gentle and rough was like electricity on my skin. I couldn't stop myself from relishing the experience, even as my startled eyes were captivated by hers. She leaned in, still speaking softly. "A lot of what I was thinking of this week was of someone special to me. I hadn't realized how special till recently. I was scared, scared that if I took the chance, maybe everything would get screwed up, that it would all get ruined. But just recently, someone told me to live each day like it was my last. And I realized that maybe it'd screw everything up, but just maybe it would be better than I ever imagined it would be. And if I never made the effort, then I'd never know." Her breath was gentle against my lips, her face mere inches away. Her eyes consumed me, even more than anything Stephanie could manage on her best of days.

My voice a dry whisper as all the saliva in my mouth deserted me instantly I manage to croak out, "Who?" Oh Gods.

I could see her smile from the corner of my eyes. My beautiful Kim. "You, Ron." Her lips met mine.


End file.
